No, absolutely not. Only people in storm surge or flood prone areas need to evacuate. Everybody else should stay in their homes and ride out the storm. This was the problem with Rita that caused the massive pileups on the freeways, people who should NOT have been evacuating causing major traffic in front of the people that HAVE to evacuate. If you don't live in the storm surge areas, stay home, you'll be fine. BBQ all the meat in your freezer on Sunday when the power is out, drink warming beer outside, etc.
I'm surprised, with the constant NW movement today I was sure this next model run would have taken Corpus out of the danger zone.
What if your house is 80 years old and a mile from downtown? Am I going to be sucked into a black hole?
what is not fair is not knowing what the hell this storm is going to do... And I don't care if I am in a storm surge area or not, tornado's will do just as much damage as storm surge.
Tim Heller(sp?) on ABC 13 said that there would not be an updated path with this advisory...just wind speeds and timing were updated.
I'm in Galveston, i'm going to go to the seawall on Friday and sit there buttnaked with beer and cornnuts.
This storm continues to move northwesterly. The models showing landfall near corpus or further south may be OTL. I'm not a hurricane expert but I can't see how a hurricane this strong can make it that far west while gaining that little latitude with an approaching trough. I just don't see it.
Fort Bend County will receive Hurricane-Force according to 3 news stations - ABC 13, NBC Local 2, and Channel 11 KHOU. They expanded the wind estimation and now if it continues it's path right now, Fort Bend County and western parts of Harris County will receive Hurricane Force winds, but not the worst of them. If it moves more to the North, it will get worse in Fort Bend and Harris.
When and if you evacuate the Houston/Galveston area Please do not take Hwy 59 North, HEAD WEST. Hwy 59 gets narrow right out of Houston and will not sustain moving traffic in an evacuation unless they go contraflow. However, the small towns will jam up anyway, and you will go nowhere. Many people died on Hwy 59 during Rita. Don't do it. It was a nightmare. Plus, the storm will likely follow you. Ike may head west after landfall, but north is more likely. But Hwy 59 is not the way to go.
The storm acts like a giant paddle pushing water in front of it as it moves across the ocean. The surge is the rising water being pushed in front of the storm. About 95% of the damage in a typical hurricane is caused by the flooding from the storm surge moving into habited areas. When they showed pictures of "blasted away" home in Mississippi from Katrina, it was within a couple miles of the coast and washed away by the water. The storm surge zones are already conservatively mapped and they correspond with the mandatory evacuation points along the coast. The rest of the damage is caused by rain flooding, high winds, and spun off tornadoes. It mostly manifests itself in outbuildings being blown down, power lines being knocked over, and trees being knocked over. Further than about 20 miles inland the weather is typically similar to a very strong thunderstorm front that we may get 4-5 times a year, except it lasts half a day instead of 45 minutes.
