Posted on 09/12/2008 11:29:13 PM PDT by 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
Houston/Galveston Long Range Radar
Corpus Christi Long Range Radar
Brownsville Long Range Radar
Lake Charles Long Range Radar
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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 |
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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)
You are right, MANY people were told to stay...I was amazed. Not that they should have evacuated the WHOLE city of houston, but my neighborhood was mandatorily evacuated and the one across the street from me was told to “hunker down”. It was a little crazy and I certainly have no faith for sure now in the Judge or Bill White....especially not the crazy woman in Galveston either.. ;0)
Sounds like a freak accident. Trees aint that big to crash through houses here
Some wags on another site were taking action on the odds of intersection between Geraldo’s head and a 120 mph starfish.
I LOLed, stayed out of it, and will neither confirm nor deny wishful thinking on my part.
Local scanner (Illinois) just reported a car submerged with occupant inside.
Yeah, trees suck.
marking place
Yeah and she might have been above the flood zone and would have been ok if the tree had not fallen. I think the same thing happened with Fay too didn’t it? People evacuated and a tree fell on the house they were staying at.
to much BS on the police bands...
The HAM nets cut through the crap and report the meat and potatos. All sounds well
Wouldn’t know. I don’t have any :’(
I don’t know if this is even worth mentioning, but I had a thought. Is there a possibility of having a severe weather “check in” thread for events such as these? I’ve noticed a lot of FReepers looking for and asking about other FReepers who were/are in the affected areas, some of whom haven’t “checked in”, so to speak. I’ve seen this done on other forums and it seems to work well. Just a thought...
Yeah. My trees are shrub size lol
Reports were that many/most of those that did not evacuate were the elderly. The Mayor’s indecision and only calling for a voluntary evacuation so long may well have doomed them to a rough night. By the time they saw the storm surge, it was too late for them to arrange a way out.
One older lady, in a report I read earlier, awoke at 1:30 and decided to get out of bed to check on things. She stepped into a foot and a half of storm surge. I really hope the guy down by the beach made it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
I guess what worries me the most is the SAR team stuck and them calling for boats to survey the rest of the island. It might mean something as simple as a breach, or that the flooding is not down enough. It also might be more damage than they can navigate through.
I’ve been through enough lesser storms in my years along the Gulf Coast to know that when they start evacuating barrier islands, it is time to go.
Out to grill dinner. Much meat on the line and it’s about to get WET here. May not be back till late evening, hang tough all.
We’ve had Check-in threads in the past. You can start one and link to it from here. If I start another thread this evening, I’ll put the link at the top of the thread.
“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.”
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I’ve made fun of the GFDL model a few times the way it reconstituted Ike as a Hurricane Cat.2 over Chicago/ Detroit in several runs two days ago ((notice EVERYONE- that ‘s NOT going to happen - it is JUST A MODEL not a forecast - even if it is “the best” model)).
After studying the way Ike is affecting nearly an eighth of the surface of the globe, maybe GFDL had a good point in being as concerned as it was. The one thing I can’t figure out about it, though, (and couldn’t when I first noticed that run) was where the heck it thought it could snarf up the energy Ike would need to maintain the power over so much land??? {{shrug}} Models get a life of their own and it is extremely difficult to figure out why the results pop out sometimes.
The photo you linked in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2081430/posts?page=1018#1018 is really remarkable and I hope most people check it out. It really gives insight as to the power of this storm.
Actually - it would be nice if someone could put a copy of it on a server somewhere so it doesn’t get changed and can be referenced for a while. The photo as linked changes every 15 minutes or so.
Thanks for providing good info. Much appreciated.
Mine are blowing around pretty good but the biggest one is but 30 foot tall. It aint going to fall but I am worried that I could lose my shortwave antenna. Its slung over that tree, but I put it up in such a way as it can give with the wind. Should be fine.
When the elderly get stressed or confused they tend not to want to leave their comfort zone and the more you press the more they dig in. They can be a real challenge.
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