Hurricane Ike Update #4

No rain yet at 8PM, but the winds have picked up. The winds are from the north at 10 mph with gusts up to 39 mph. Here's where I'm watching the wind speeds. The winds were stronger when I went outside an hour and a half ago. Everyone thought that the rain and some wind would be here around noon today. It appears that the hurricane is tightening, which means a stronger storm for a shorter period of time.

Waiting for this thing to hit has been brutal. The news just runs on a cycle, giving us the same stuff all the time. Everyone is posted up on Galveston Island, but I'd like to see what's going on closer to Houston. The strangest thing is that there is a bunch of flooding both on the island and in town, and it hasn't rained at all yet. The storm surge is flowing from the gulf, up the bay, up the ship channel and into the bayous.

We've just had our fifth and sixth power blips. I'm not sure if the next one will be the last one. It isn't enough to kill my clock, but the lights go out, the AC trips and the tv cuts out. I've heard parts of town have reported power outages, so maybe the blips are coming from load dropping off the grid.

I'll write shorter posts more frequently so I don't get cut off. The power blips probably aren't good for my TV, so I think I'll be moving it into the closet here shortly. I'm hoping to keep power for a while, because I don't think I have a battery powered radio. Oops.

Satellite Image of Ike