Hurricane Alex is noteworthy for what it did and did not do. It did become the first Atlantic Basin hurricane during the month of June since 1995. It did not strike the United States directly. It made landfall in Mexico, bringing heavy rains to parts of Texas. It did not completely halt Gulf oil spill clean-up operations. It merely slowed them.
Had Alex taken a more northerly path, high winds and waves would have created havoc. The storm might have required removal of the BP well-cap on the sea floor, significantly increasing the amount of oil released into the sea. That would have been disastrous. As it is, BP’s spill became the biggest ever in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, using figures based on the highest of the U.S. government’s estimates.
Using that scale, the now nearly three-month long spill has disgorged about 140.6 million gallons of oil. That breaks the record set by a spill off Mexico in 1979-1980. Some might argue the government’s upper estimate is too high. Perhaps, but even the lowest estimate– more than 71 million gallons — is mind-boggling. Whatever the total, it continues to grow every minute.
The scenario could be worse. Though Alex passed far from the spill area, its winds and waves still forced the halt of skimming work and of putting down booms designed to corral oil. Operations at the site of the explosion and spill continued, as did drilling of the relief wells that officials hope will halt the leak. That’s cold comfort.
The rough seas engendered by Alex did push tar balls and crude oil up to 60 yards further up Gulf Coast beaches than had been noted previously. In other places, more and heavier concentrations of oil, riding the winds and waves, neared landfall. That understandably adds to the worries of those whose livelihoods already have been severely impacted by the disaster.