SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Tex. — South Padre Island on Texas’s Lower Gulf Coast was spared a direct hit from Hurricane Harvey, and tourists and locals in the resort community took to the beach with cellphones, dogs and beverages to witness the storm’s aftermath up close.

“To us, it’s just normal,” said truck driver Paul Vega, who had driven from his home in Los Fresnos, 30 miles inland, with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. They watched the surf churning from the boardwalk at the Good Hope Beach Access, a row of hotels towering behind them.

“We’ve lived through everything before, but this is the first time my daughter experiences a hurricane,” he said. “It’s beautiful to see nature’s fury.”

Nearby, Louis Snell, a machine operator vacationing from Kalamazoo, Mich., recorded cellphone video footage of brown pelicans dipping in and out of the heavy surf.

“We had no idea this was going to happen,” Snell said. He flew in Thursday with his daughter and three grandchildren and planned to stay until Tuesday. “Now that we’re here, we might as well see what we can see.”

South Padre Island was one of the first places in the country to feel Harvey’s effects, with a two-foot tidal surge washing over the barrier sand dunes at 10 a.m. The Queen Isabella Memorial Causeway, the only bridge connecting the island to the mainland, was briefly closed but reopened by early afternoon as the wind died down and heavy rainfall did not materialize.

Rainfall on South Padre measured 1.8 inches, well short of the 3-to-7-inch deluge forecast. The top recorded wind speeds of 40 mph were also less than feared.

“As this hurricane moves north to Corpus Christi, conditions are improving along the lower Texas coast,” said Joseph Tomaselli, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Brownsville. “Luckily, our area down here is going to miss what looks to be a very memorable hurricane for some time to come.”

By 5 p.m. local time, the sun was making cameo appearances, and South Padre Island residents Sheryl Hill and Rees Langston were strolling on the beach in their bare feet. Hill carried a can of beer in a cozy as waves lapped up against the dunes.

“We dodged a bullet,” Hill said, “but our heart bleeds for Corpus and further north.”

— Daniel Tyx