Is Houston better off if this storm moves through the Gulf quickly (leaving less chance of the system in the pacific northwest to move down and force out the high that's keeping Ike further south and west) or slowly?
These models are swinging back and forth like crazy. I really thought this morning's models were gonna hold tight...reasonably close at least. So much for that. Tomorrow morning is 3 days out. That 11 a.m. update tomorrow will be interesting.
The dreaded turn north. Another Rita? Rita was forecast to hit around this spot 4 days out and kept moving north.
Well, I tell ya what.... If a cat 1 hurricane hits Houston or just West of Houston, and knocks out power in several places in the city for days... and uproots trees, throwing them into houses all through the city... THEN I'll retract my statements. I'll say I was wrong, and that I've been proven wrong by hurricane XYZ. In the interim, however, I will remain skeptical against the forecasts, I will stand by my statement that the media whips Houstonians into a frenzy over weak hurricanes and TS's, and I will remain optimistic about the weather.
I wouldn't sweat too furiously a cat. 1. I mean, you prepare for it because you'll probably have some power outages. But this is forecast to make landfall as a cat. 3, still, according to the NHC.
from the chron blogs and cnn, theres a very good chance it'll hit below a cat3. most likely a cat1 or 2. ugh
i'm gonna go with the national hurricane center over the SciGuy and CNN. either could be right, of course.
Ah - now, I'll give some credit there. A hurricane that's projected to hit land as a cat 3 or stronger will definitely get my full attention. In 1983 Alicia (cat 3) hit Houston directly and took out electricity for many areas in Houston for at least a week. Ouch. Rita scared the pants off of me 'cause, until the last minute, it was a cat 5 coming straight for us. Then it went west and beat the pants off of Beaumont. I don't want to sound like I don't care about hurricanes or TS's. I just don't jump whenever the media tries to hype it up. The fact of the matter is.... in my lifetime (39 years) as a native Houstonian, Houston has only been seriously affected by one hurricane (Alicia) and one tropical storm (Allison). I'm not saying it'll never happen again (that'd be stupid). I'm just saying that it almost never happens.
It's funny how much interest people have in hurricanes. My wife is obsessed to know all about the hurricane and is impatient to have better information. Meanwhile, with the models changing all the time, I'm sensing the futility of trying to know anything a week out; apparently our predictive powers are just not that good. So, I'll tune in 2 days out and see if I'm about to die or what.
Live hurricane chat with Chron Sci Guy right now: http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/hurricanes/ike/
I like it when weathermen say "50% chance of rain". That basically means they have no idea. JuanValdez: "Hey droxford, is it gonna rain today?" droxford: "Well, ya know, Juan, I have no idea. Let's toss this coin and find out. Heads - it'll rain. Tails - it won't" JuanValdez: "uh.... So, you're giving it a 50% chance of rrain?" droxford: "hmmm.... yeah, I guess that's true. Ready? Call it in the air."
I thought 50% chance meant it would have a 50% chance of raining at any point in the day. So it should be raining 50% of the time.
It happend with more frequency before, actually. We're well overdue if the 20th century is a guide. It's been 25 years since a major storm. Alicia spawned a bunch of tornados...we had one hit our house when I was a kid and it knocked part of the roof off...we lived in a hotel for 7 weeks while they repaired our home and all the water damage. Alicia took out tons of glass from the towers downtown...it shut down the central business district for at least a week, if i remember correctly. It did billions of dollars worth of damage. And it was a weak Cat. 3...I've read some reports that there were meterologists who classified it Cat. 2. The most interesting thing about Alicia was how quickly it developed...it went from being this little low pressure system we need to keep our eye on to a Cat 3 making landfall in about 36 hours. That's not much time to prepare.
I went thru a 1 last summer. We took a direct hit and were about as far off the coast as Houston. we didn't even lose power, and only had a few branches down in the yard. I also went thru a TS last month and Rita, as well. Out of convenience, I will leave if we get evac notices for less than a 3 (I have small kids and power outages tend to pose problems with our sanity), but I will not go further than 100 or so miles inland unless it is a 3. We went to Jasper for Rita and still took a pretty good pounding there. I agree with you that there is a huge difference between a 1 and a 3 (I've seen it first hand). Riding out a 1 or 2 is not too bad, but don;t take any chances on the 3.
There was a cat 1 that hit Houston in the late 80s. The only damage I saw was I saw a motorcycle blown over in the parking lot (lived over by the dome). I did get sent home from work that day though so that was a plus.
