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)
Thanks for providing your local update. Please check in when you can.
KHOU is so impressive with their coverage.. for those who may have not streamed.. try it. I have had it on all the time while home/at computer
http://www.khou.com/video/?nvid=178826&live=yes&noad=yes
thanks for your excellent posts
I was streaming it yesterday and discovered my local station, cbs was carrying KHOU for quite awhile...Excellent coverage.
She is probably the norm for many communities as mayor. Okay for the small community stuff & PR functions
but something like this? out of her league (or recall the recent PAY GRADE comment?)
penelopesire:
MEGADITTOS
I know all the kms prefixes - but there is nothing more powerful that I can think of to say.
The governor’s office was doing everything but taking a gun out and holding it to her head, too.
Now, I don’t know how well Galveston Island turned out to weather this... it may be that most of the folks that stayed behind the seawall are alive. I still think she was extremely caviler with the lives of the community. It is debatable as to how much her attitude contributed to the “I’m stayin’” attitude of people not in Galveston, but I would expect it to have been a factor for some.
OBTW, thank you for your excellent explantions of the weather phenomena as they unfolded. They were both professional, and understandable!
Well, I am still alive. The water from Ike was so minimal that we never had even an inch of standing water in the street. I suspected it wouldn’t be as bad as they were saying but it was freakishly minimal for a hurricane. Guess Galveston took it for the rest of us. I’m also betting the storm is dropping the water further inland and Arkansas/Missouri will get lots of flooding if they haven’t already.
We have about 2-3 dozen shingles down. I called my roofer yesterday around noon and he’ll be out as soon as the weather permits - I’m first on his list. It’s raining now at least as hard as during the hurricane, if not more. I suspect my roof will be repaired around Tuesday.
The rain started around dark Friday and we slept some but the winds were loud and it was hard to sleep once they got going good. We lost power Saturday 12:30 AM. The eye came over us around 3:30 AM so we went outside and resecured any items that needed it and surveyed the damage. Both of my majestic beauties that stand on each corner at the front of my house had blown over. About 4:15 we finished up and came in to ride out the other half. By 9:00 AM Saturday morning, you could safely go outside. It sprinkled Saturday morning on and off, very lightly.
Being it was so hot and humid inside the house, we stayed outside and started cleaning up all the dead limbs, etc. We got the majestic beauties restaked and upright. They picked up all our trash about an hour ago. City trucks are working around the clock. We probably have about another half day of work on the yard. Our home is 5.5 years old so we don’t have any of those 100 year old oaks like some in our city. Driving around yesterday, those are the areas that look really bad.
We got power back about 12:30 AM this morning. What a relief! It was so humid and hot, I could not sleep. It was 84 inside and the tile floors in the kitchen were wet from the humidity. Kind of miserable to try and sleep in.
So I’m sorry for the disappointing hurricane report, nothing to gasp about. I’m sure there’s plenty of that in Galveston right now though. We have several friends with beach houses that I’m sure are washed to sea. We have one friend that lives full time in Bayou Vista in Galveston. I’m sure he came to the mainland for the storm because he works near the ship channel at a refinery and would have to be at work.
Give me a half a dozen D9’s and I’ll have that mess and a whole lot more, cleaned up real quick.
In Alicia, we did it in 6 hours, from Broadway and 61st to the railroad overpass at the 7 1/2 mile marker. They are using that debris as a roadblock, to keep people from coming back. And you wonder why these people stay on the island???
Thanks for checking in. Good to hear you are ok.
While Galveston took a solid beating, points east of there took the brunt of the storm surge, with search and rescue efforts ongoing.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this but guess I will anyway. Galveston is like a mini-NOLA in the respect that there are a high percentage of poor welfare recipients there. I’m sure that the replay of events could turn into something similar to Katrina. There are lots of Katrina refugees still living in and off of Houston. Three years later! We know this because they are in the news all the time - not in a positive way.
I never once heard any of her statements pre-storm. I would not base my decision on anything she or even my mayor/governor said. They all have their own agendas just like the news media. We look at the facts and decide from there. Geraldo serves only as entertainment in this household :-)
I wouldn’t hold Gov Perry Zoolander up too high. He’s a RINO in a lot of ways. This state has suffered since Bush left that office. Problem is, he’s still the best choice out there and we have to keep electing him. I miss Bush!!!
WOW, house shaking thunder going on here now.
GLAD TO SEE YOU
(i’m not at all good at seeing ghosts)
Hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry if anyone misread my posts and thought I was in Galveston. What I posted was that I am 10 miles west of the northwest corner of Galveston Bay. Quite a bit of difference there as you can see on a map. I would not stay in Galveston for ANY hurricane/tropical storm/tropical depression. I would crawl off the island if I had to. I mean for cripes sake, it’s surrounded by water.
Hey.. SO GOOD TO SEE YOU
thanks for checking in & report
Reports coming out of Baytown and San Leon have been minimal. Our San Leon resident FReeper has been offline since Friday morning. What little I could find about San Leon post Ike sounds dire.
I would have continued posting but Comcast went down about 4:00 PM that Friday and didn’t come up until around 10:00 PM again. I was already in bed and too tired from preparing and re-preparing for the storm all day.
Thanks!
yes
the various media blogs & boards have been helpful in getting the accuract overview
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