Hurricane Ike Update #3

This is getting serious ... Anderson Cooper is here! Ahhhh!!! And I thought it was bad when Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel was in Galveston! Cooper keeps asking everyone where he should broadcast from tomorrow night. No one wants to tell him he should be right in the middle of it, but he's looking for the good stuff. Some tie-him-to-a-pole-type stuff. He's getting cavalier, he didn't get to New Orleans until after the actual storm. Having somebody out there in the middle of it gives some perspective, but I don't need every major news anchor out there in a slicker in the middle of the hurricane.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox. Back to the hurricane at hand. The "new" news: apparently, one of the weather services is telling people that if they stay on Galveston Island, it means "certain death." Hardcore! That sounds a little far-fetched for me. The storm of 1900 killed 8000 of roughly 100,000 people living on the island and that was in
View Larger Map'>wooden structures. I haven't taken the time to get any numbers on the 1900 storm, but I'd think that the storm surge in 1900 would have been worse then than after construction of the 16 foot storm wall. In any case, it appears that this hurricane will come "straight up the gut" as we have been saying.



I guess what this means, the winds and the storm surge could be worse. The storm surge isn't nearly as bad on the "left" side of the storm, so if it moved just east of Galveston Bay, Houston would get the wind, but not the surge. It sure looks like downtown Houston, of which I'll call myself a part, will be getting some serious winds. 80+ for sure. Sustained for hours. Should be intense.

Earlier in the day, I missed a couple things. There is a small community called Bayou Vista, TX that started taking on water as early as 4PM this afternoon. The local news showed video of cars driving through a foot or more of water. I didn't find a pictures of this on the internet, so I've included a map. As you can see, it's on the mainland side of the bay, right before the bridge to Galveston Island. Oh, this flooding occurred 36 hours before the eye of the storm was to hit landfall.



Another unsettling thing I saw while driving about, was the boarding up of houses and businesses. A couple homes were boarded up and the funeral home (I'll have to post a picture!) was boarded up all the way around. Hopefully they don't know something I don't. Like I said earlier, the worst we have is eastern exposure on the windows, which is probably bad news if the hurricane comes in directly south of us.

If anyone is wondering, our 2nd (what's it called if it's twice in one year?) official CPC Hurricane Party occurred at Onion Creek in the Heights neighborhood and was delightful and breezy. I had Red Stripes because they were an affordable $2 each! We didn't have any hurricane parties for two summers and now have had two in one summer, wonder when the next one will be?

I'm off to find Anderson Cooper!