Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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Edouard arrived on the Texas coast as only a tropical storm on Tuesday.

Only a tropical storm.

Certainly, we're all glad it wasn't a full-fledged hurricane, but that phrase "only a tropical storm" can carry some faulty assumptions.

Think back to Feb. 10 -- the big windstorm in Southwest Virginia. We had about six hours or so of sustained winds 30 to 50 mph, with gusts topping 60 mph.

Tens of thousands of people lost power. Trees and limbs were knocked down everywhere you looked. Many structures sustained roof damage.

That afternoon of wind was equivalent to a moderately strong tropical storm.

Increase the winds a little bit from Feb. 10, throw in some heavy rain and roiling waves, and that's what a tropical storm is like.

So, while it wasn't that bad compared to a hurricane, being where Tropical Storm Edouard made landfall would have been a more intense event than almost anything Southwest Virginia experiences.