Hurricane Ike Live Thread IV

NOAA/NHC ^ | 14 September 2008 | NOAA/NHC

[NautiNurse]

The eyewall of Hurricane Ike crossed Galveston Island in the early hours of Saturday morning. Reports indicate as many as 20,000 residents of Galveston Island chose not to evacuate as storm surge engulfed the island. The Freeport Chief of Police reported as many as 2000 residents did not evacuate as flood waters swamped coastal communities. There are widespread reports of power outages and coastal flooding throughout the Texas/Louisiana region. The U.S. Coast Guard received hundreds of calls Friday afternoon to rescue people stranded by flood waters along the barrier islands and Galveston Bay communities.

Multiple fires broke out in the Greater Houston area fueled by strong winds. Fire fighting efforts were hampered by flood waters. Brennan's Restaurant, a landmark in Houston, burned to the ground. A 584-foot freighter crippled in the Gulf of Mexico and its crew of 22 survived the storm after The U.S. Coast Guard was forced to abort rescue efforts Friday afternoon due to foul weather

Gulf Coast wholesale gasoline prices jumped to nearly $5 a gallon over fears that water and wind damage could keep the facilities closed for days or longer. Oil companies had shut down 97.5 percent of production in the Gulf of Mexico by Friday morning and were battening down refineries and petrochemical plants in an area that accounts for one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity.

Exxon Mobil reported evacuating workers from its Gulf Coast offshore platforms and onshore facilities in the anticipated path of Ike, shutting down daily production of about 36,000 barrels of oil and 270 million cubic feet of gas..

Public Advisory Updated every 3 hours

Discussion Updated every 6 hours

Buoy data: Western Gulf of Mexico

Forecast Models

Houston/Galveston Long Range Radar
Corpus Christi Long Range Radar
Brownsville Long Range Radar
Lake Charles Long Range Radar

Ike
Single Image		Image Loop
Lat/Lon	No Lat/Lon	Short	Long
Visible	Visible	Visible	Visible
Shortwave	Shortwave	Shortwave	Shortwave
Water Vapor	Water Vapor	Water Vapor	Water Vapor
Infrared Channel 4 Enhancements
None	None	None	None
AVN	AVN	AVN	AVN
Dvorak	Dvorak	Dvorak	Dvorak
JSL	JSL	JSL	JSL
RGB	RGB	RGB	RGB
Funktop	Funktop	Funktop	Funktop
Rainbow	Rainbow	Rainbow	Rainbow

Additional Resources:

Navy Tropical Cyclone
Storm Pulse Very cool site

KHOU Houston
ABC 13 News Houston
FOX News Houston

KPLC Lake Charles
KFDM 6 Beaumont/Port Arthur
KKBMT 12 Beaumont
KRIS-TV Corpus Christi
KZTV Corpus Christi

Brazoria County Emergency Management
Galveston County Emergency Management
Chambers Country Emergency Management
Liberty County Emergency Management

Category	Wind Speed	Barometric Pressure	Storm Surge	Damage Potential
Tropical Depression	< 39 mph < 34 kts			Minimal
Tropical Storm	39 - 73 mph 34 - 63 kts			Minimal
Hurricane 1 (Weak)	74 - 95 mph 64 - 82 kts	28.94" or more 980.02 mb or more	4.0' - 5.0' 1.2 m - 1.5 m	Minimal damage to vegetation
Hurricane 2 (Moderate)	96 - 110 mph 83 - 95 kts	28.50" - 28.93" 965.12 mb - 979.68 mb	6.0' - 8.0' 1.8 m - 2.4 m	Moderate damage to houses
Hurricane 3 (Strong)	111 - 130 mph 96 - 112 kts	27.91" - 28.49" 945.14 mb - 964.78 mb	9.0' - 12.0' 2.7 m - 3.7 m	Extensive damage to small buildings
Hurricane 4 (Very strong)	131 - 155 mph 113 - 135 kts	27.17" - 27.90" 920.08 mb - 944.80 mb	13.0' - 18.0' 3.9 m - 5.5 m	Extreme structural damage
Hurricane 5 (Devastating)	Greater than 155 mph Greater than 135 kts	Less than 27.17" Less than 920.08 mb	Greater than 18.0' Greater than 5.5m	Catastrophic building failures possible

Previous Threads:
Hurricane Ike Live Thread III
Hurricane Ike Live Thread II
Hurricane Ike Live Thread I
TS Hanna, Hurricane Ike & TS Josephine [Other than that, the tropics are calm]
Tropical Storms Hanna, Ike and Josephine, TD Gustav (Other than that, the tropics are calm)

[Ingtar]

Number 17 is a joke picture I saw on here last night.

All your page are belong to Ford. Every time I hit next, it adds another Ford ad to the page.

[AFPhys]

I’m still gawking at this large angle view of the Ike WV channel...

Man Oh Man - the area that this storm affected the weather patterns seems even larger than the size of the whole United States! Scratch “affected”: make that “dominated” !

[jeffers]

Tell your friend things should improve after this band of convection moves through. Surge, wind, and rain all three.

He’s almost through with direct effects from Ike.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Well I hope he is still on this earth. Folks here on FR did everything but go to his place with guns and kidnap him to get him to go.

[arkady_renko]

Yeah, I think we all begged him to leave and then didn’t hear anything. I’m hoping he’ll check in soon.

[jeffers]

Will the trough go retrograde?

[Conservababe]

Why don’t you purchase or update a computer that will handle animated graphics instead of expecting others to be denied the pleasure?

[uglybiker]

Hope so, too.

Funny thing is, one of my brothers lives over there, too. Just yesterday he was getting a new job, so we're blaming this all on him. ;-)

'I got a new job!'...and lo were there thunderings and lightnings...

[AFPhys]

Funny - I was just looking at that, too. See the post I just made ! It is pretty clear from that photo in #1018 that Ike is the dominant force now in the US. It may be able to be steered, but it’s not going to be defeated.

[mylife]

Ya gotta pick on the brother!

[NautiNurse]

Chertoff confirms search and rescue and efforts to obtain casualty data will take 2 days. He stated that search and rescue personnel are put at greater risk to their own safety due to the large number of people who ignored evacuation orders.

Chertoff said there are 52 choppers available for search and rescue.

Governor Perry has ordered 7500 National Guard troops to the affected region. Top priority today is search and rescue. TX pre-positioned the largest search and rescue operation in the history of TX for this storm. They are arriving by air, boat and ground.

[Miss Marple]

In post one of this thread NautiNurse requested NO animated graphics.

[jeffers]

Man-o-man is right.

Ike is pulling moisture from a thousand miles out in the Pacific, and a thousand miles out in the Atlantic.

The core is already as wet as it gets, with more on the way, and the backside is puling down polar air from Canada.

Give this a day to organize, and the cold front could put down a LOT of tornadoes. Everyone south of the center of circulation and out front of the developuing cold front is potentially at risk from severe weather.

Midwest and Mississippi Valley Sunday, east coast Monday.

[sheikdetailfeather]

Thanks jeffers. I let my friend know it won’t be much longer. Appreciate your input.

[jeffers]

Bandwidth limitations are largely for the benefit of stricken areas. Slow connections ride along for free.

[arkady_renko]

Should have put a line break after the graphic in that post.

I'll see how new the water vapor sat image is and see what else may influence the merger.

[pax_et_bonum]

Why don’t you purchase or update a computer that will handle animated graphics instead of expecting others to be denied the pleasure?

At a time of emergency on a high-volume live thread, I think it's no problem and maybe even common courtesy for us to post links instead of graphics for those who need it.

[NautiNurse]

This isn't a matter of pleasure as much as it is to accommodate those FReepers who are reduced to dial-up internet access when their electricity is lost. Currently, there are a lot of FReepers who have weathered this storm, along with at least 4 million people who are without electricity.

In addition, folks have a bad habit of hotlinking graphics from sites that can not handle the traffic load. There have been countless numbers of posts deleted by the admin mods for hot linking Associated Press and Getty photos.

That is why we keep graphics to a minimum on this thread. If you want to start a photo gallery thread about Ike, please do so. Thanks.

[mylife]

You doing alright down there?

[mylife]

Heard from the other HAT heads?