Seems to me the storm was so big, and from the way the water levels rose throughout the Gulf, that what happened was that the kinetic energy of the storm was well-dispersed instead of being focused mainly at the point around the landfall. So while the speculation was that Galveston would get a Cat 4 surge because of the tremendous kinetic energy of the storm, it turns out that wasn’t the case.
Agreed, but I wasn’t willing to make that call last night. Could have been a wall of water around the eye, or a wide dome as you state. We got lucky...so far anyway...
My prayers to all involved atm and those in the near future.
N. of Cedar Creek Lake here and I’m losing visibility and wind is increasing dramatically.
This sucker is HUGE!
Be careful
It was rather speculative. But a big factor was that unlike the 1900 storm at 931 mb, this storm was 952, so the winds didn't feed as much inward to the center of the storm. A second factor was the winds weren't as strong in approach to Galveston (all the way from Cuba) so there wasn't as much of a wall of water being built up.