they just showed a graphic of the storm superimposed over the state of texas. it covered about 90 percent of the state. that is one very big storm!
i did snicker when anderson cooper asked chad to send him an email on where he thinks they should hole up and cover the storm. anderson asked if going to galveston… he didn’t get any further. chad jumped in yelling “no!no, no,no, no,NO!”
earlier today chad had mentioned a few times that no reporters should be in galveston for this storm.
Hey, you’re back!
If you come up this way, I’d keep on going to the Woodlands. I’m not absolutely confident the warehouse won’t re-enact the scene with Dorothy’s house in the tornado.
While I think about it, up the street from our work location, there’s a Hispanic family who own two or three big rigs they park in the yard of their house. A while back they put up a homebuilt wooden shelter for the trucks, with the roof held up by 2 x 4s installed on what looked like about 48" centers, and with the sides partially sheathed with thin plywood. I’d bet money that thing’s going to be gone by the time Sunday rolls around.
Hey, y’all don’t forget cash. Have some cash on hand, the power may be out a week or two (no ATM’s or banks open).
I read a neat tip on wunderground the other day: Freeze water in ziplock bags. You can use them in your ice chest to keep things cold, and as they thaw out you have drinking water.
The recent updates sound alarming, especially the ones that warn of “certain death” for those who remain in small buildings or houses on the Galveston shore.
I’m hoping it’s an exaggeration on the side of caution, and I have seen that sort of thing before. While I was at UC San Diego–that’s San Diego mind you, the one place in the continental U.S. that has the absolute mildest weather, they shut the campus down one afternoon because the “storm of the century”, or something like that, was rapidly bearing down on us. In the end it was nothing more than a couple of cloudbursts.
Well, there’s good news and bad news.
The good news is that it appears – appears – the storm not only won’t hit us hard (as was possible just last weekend), it possibly won’t hit us at all. We’re on tap (heh) right now to get between 1 and 3 inches of rain.
The bad news is that this thing is coming just as this giant Mexican festival, Dieciseis de Septiembre, celebrating Mexico’s independence, is getting under way. That means hotels, motels and most everything else here is booked. So people getting evacuated here are staying in rec centers and such.
I’d offer my couch to the first person who wants to hunker down well away from where any real action will be going on, but A) I think it’s already reserved for a friend (and the boyfriend of) of the wife, and B) driving from anywhere east of here means driving through the storm, or at least something that looks righteously ominous, and that’s a recipe for a whole lotta not fun.
And anyone west of here likely has no serious chance of being hit.
Punha, where are you located these days?
Hm, that’s a great idea about the water.
Stay safe out there TX. This storm is sounding mighty nasty, give us an update when you’re able to.
Tropical Update September 12, 10:53 AM EDT
Name: Hurricane Ike
Location: About 295 miles, 480 km, East of Corpus Christi Texas And About 195 Miles, 320 Km Southeast Of Galveston Texas.
Lat/Long: 27.2N, 92.6W
Max Winds: 105 mph
Category: 2
Heading: West-Northwest
Speed: 12 mph
Pressure: 28.17 inches
It’s bright and sunny outside my house right now - the calm before the storm. Less than 50 miles south of me, Galveston and Surfside are already flooding because of the storm surge. The winds are rated at Cat 2, but the surge is rated at Cat 4, and possibly Cat 5 because landfall is due at high tide.
The barometric pressures along the Coast are lowest right at Galveston and the storm will head toward that point. The local weather guy just said that we have a strong possibility of a storm similar to Carla following the same track that Alicia did.
And that will NOT be good.
I’m glad it missed Florida, but hang on guys…post when you can!
I think this is borne from problems they had with other large storms such as Katrina. Folks don’t leave, then the surge rushes in and drowns them. 911 calls from Katrina are horrible - some of them all you can hear is just screaming.
Granted, Katrina surge came in a lot faster than what Ike seems to be pushing. (Evidently many people were caught in their living rooms, hadn’t time to run to the attic stairs). But, I gotta tell ya, if your house floats away you won’t have much to hang on to, when you’re bobbing amongst the 20-ft + waves in the Bay.
Clothahump, I think you’ll be fine where you are. My thoughts and prayers go out to the people in low-lying areas.
For the record, puttin’ up plywood is one heckuva lot of work. Whew. We’re definately seeing a lot more wind and things are getting pretty dark but it’s nothing compared to the local feeds on Galveston right now. For anyone who’s ever walked along the seawall to see those breakers coming over, it’s nothing short of astounding and the storm’s still what… about 150 miles away? The eastern and western portions of the island are flooding, water’s coming through the Strand and the Weater Channel reports about 50% of the population may still be on the island. Lord help 'em.
Y’all come on up to Austin. You can party and hang out and then head back on Monday. Just like every weekend.
We’re expecting tropical storm winds. I say bring it. I’m ready for a storm. Of course that’s easy to say 250 miles from the coast. Good luck to the southeast Texans.
We’re all hunkered down with a pitcher of Hurricanes, ready for Ike. Only real worry is the storm surge going up the bayous; hopefully drainage ditches and the like will absorb enough of the overflow that no bad happens.
Its deathly quiet around my parents neighborhood. Really rather creepy, truly the lul before the storm.
Good luck for all other Houston dopers, and any others affected by big bad Ike! May he pass over your area without any major damage.
At 11 AM, I was in the Greenspoint area of Houston and the radio was reporting storm center 190 miles from Galveston, so roughly 240 miles from my position. Already at that point there was a strong wind blowing NE-SW. That’s pretty impressive.
Here in the Woodlands, it’s now clouded up, but the wind hasn’t really gotten going yet.
Whoa, windows that are rated for 100 MPH winds? Can you tell me more about these windows? We have storm windows, but not only do I not know their wind rating, but it makes it hard to cover them with plywood, since they stick out past the house.
I’ve got some friends also in Clear Lake City who are riding it out at home. They’ve got all their windows boarded up and have plenty of food, water and batteries and such. We’re staying in contact - I hope all of y’all stay safe! And don’t lose electricity for too long.
There’s a boat about 100 miles out that is desperate to be rescued, and the choppers can’t do it. They had the voices of the people on the ship, and they’re freaked.
Take care all of you. This is really, really frightening.
Probably, but my San Diego story is from 1980 (I’m old!). Seems like they’ve always been doing it here and there. Since it was California, maybe they were afraid the rain would make us dissolve. Excessively dire government warnings can be harmful over the long run, like in the area of drug abuse. The early warnings about marijuana were so ridiculously overblown that some people ignored accurate warnings about other drugs that were more dangerous.
There were lots of engineering majors at my internal college, Revelle, though I wasn’t one of them. You’d have liked it there.
Laredo.
It was, as seems to be typical ahead of a storm like this, a very nice day earlier. Now intermittent light rain has begun and, oddly, the cloud cover is moving south-southwest.