On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey's landfall brought the first-year students' first semester at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) to a standstill after only a week of classes. This natural disaster provided an opportunity to explore Hurricane Harvey's impacts phenomenologically with the 11 undergraduate participants. The present phenomenological study used narrative analysis in order to explore the participants' Harvey-related experiences and themes that emerged through interviews about Hurricane Harvey. Participants experienced both the corrosive and therapeutic impacts of Hurricane Harvey. Corrosive impacts were stress and anxiety above and beyond normal academic stressors and "survivor's guilt." Conversely, the therapeutic impacts included increased altruism, appreciation of returning to normalcy, and improved academic support immediately before, during, and after the disaster. The present study's findings add to the body of higher education research on the impacts of natural disasters, guide future discussions regarding emergency preparedness and disaster management, and support departmental, college, and institutional efforts to support students during crises.