After the Rain: Storm topples Brownsville's Virgin Mary tree

For almost 20 years, a rickety old Cottonwood tree stood on the corner of East Levee and 10th streets in downtown Brownsville, growing into a landmark in the early 1990s when the image of the Virgin Mary was discerned on its bark.

Amid the discovery, hundreds of believers — including dozens from across the country — trickled into the city to hang flowers and offerings on its branches and place candles by its roots. Some simply came to stand by its side in quiet prayer.

The tree had survived the hands and knives of people clipping its leaves and attempting to remove bits from its trunk for mementos. It had lived through arsonists’ fires. But when heavy rains swept through the Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday, winds toppled the tree to the ground and left it resting in pieces outside of the now abandoned boarding house where it was located. Purple and red plastic flowers were crushed under the soft, wet wood.

"It is sad. A lot of people had already stopped coming to see the image (on the tree)," said 51-year-old Roberto Ayala, who remembers gathering with dozens from his neighborhood to see and touch its bark. "Now we are going to forget what once appeared there."

The severe weather that took down the Cottonwood quickly passed through the Valley Tuesday morning, moving from Hidalgo County through Harlingen, Los Fresnos and Brownsville in a matter of hours and reaching the Gulf of Mexico by the afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.

An area of thunderstorms that developed over Northwest Texas and rapidly surged south at about midnight Tuesday caused the line of storms to form in the Valley, which dropped about 1.34 inches of rain in Brownsville, 1.13 inches in Harlingen and 1.22 in Weslaco, NWS meteorologist Greg Flatt said.

The rain "came down at once, but if it would have moved a lot slower, it would have been a lot worse," Flatt said.

The NWS reported winds up to 50 miles per hour in Brownsville and 60 miles an hour in San Benito in that time. Forecasters also reported excessive and possibly deadly lightning, torrential rain, gusty winds and hail.

But no major emergencies or power outages were reported, city officials said. The NWS predicts today to be partly sunny, with a high near 91 degrees — although winds are expected to pick up again and could gust as high as 33 mph. Stronger winds also could cause the risk of rip currents developing in the surf near the beaches of South Padre Island and Boca Chica Beach.

So perhaps, the greatest casualty of Tuesday’s stint of severe weather was the Cottonwood tree, some residents said. By Tuesday afternoon, city officials were deciding where and how to move its pieces out of the area in a way that preserves what many say are sketches of the Virgin Mary.

Earlier that day, Alicia Rodriguez, a bus driver for the Brownsville Independent School District, briskly walked by the remnants of the tree on the other side of the street. Years ago, she says, she would see crowds gathered outside the old, wooden-frame house to pay their respects, as she drove along Levee Street on her bus route.

"Those kinds of images and appearances are not real. They do not last," she said. "Faith we have to keep in our hearts."