it's +/-88 miles from Houston to Beaumont. even if it moved halfway in that direction, it would be great for all of us on the west side, and Galveston. say High Island'ish.
After reading all of this, I am amazed that Houston hasn't gotten a direct hit in decades. (excluding Allison)
That would really suck. I've always been terrified of tornadoes. I've had nightmares about them since I was 5 years old and still have them to this day,crazy stuff.
i've told this story probably 5 time in this thread alone...but we had a little twister hit my home during alicia...i was 9 years old...i can still remember the sound of the aluminum siding getting peeled off the side of our house.
Yeah,I know what you're talking about. I was in the path of a huge tornado as a kid. Luckily,my grandfather was smart and had a underground shelter because he was in tornado country. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. I think that led to my nightmares. As far as this hurricane,I'm staying here(Pasadena). I have my generators ready to roll and I'm stocked up on supplies.
Check out stormpulse and click on historial track on the top right corner and zoom in. Ike would have to take strong west turn for it to stay in the cone. It really looks like this will be going east of Galveston.
actually it appears to me that every other turn is more west than north...and the next turn would be just west still within the cone.
good lord, talk about strong language. Did anyone else read this on the National Hurricane center advisory? http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/WTUS84-KHGX.shtml --------------- GULF-FACING COASTAL AREAS FROM MATAGORDA TO HIGH ISLAND INCLUDING GALVESTON ISLAND...12 TO 16 FEET LIFE THREATENING INUNDATION LIKELY! ALL NEIGHBORHOODS...AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES... WILL BE INUNDATED DURING HIGH TIDE. PERSONS NOT HEEDING EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH. MANY RESIDENCES OF AVERAGE CONSTRUCTION DIRECTLY ON THE COAST WILL BE DESTROYED. WIDESPREAD AND DEVASTATING PERSONAL PROPERTY DAMAGE IS LIKELY ELSEWHERE. VEHICLES LEFT BEHIND WILL LIKELY BE SWEPT AWAY. NUMEROUS ROADS WILL BE SWAMPED...SOME MAY BE WASHED AWAY BY THE WATER. ENTIRE FLOOD PRONE COASTAL COMMUNITIES WILL BE CUTOFF. WATER LEVELS MAY EXCEED 9 FEET FOR MORE THAN A MILE INLAND. COASTAL RESIDENTS IN MULTI-STORY FACILITIES RISK BEING CUTOFF. CONDITIONS WILL BE WORSENED BY BATTERING WAVES. SUCH WAVES WILL EXACERBATE PROPERTY DAMAGE...WITH MASSIVE DESTRUCTION OF HOMES...INCLUDING THOSE OF BLOCK CONSTRUCTION. DAMAGE FROM BEACH EROSION COULD TAKE YEARS TO REPAIR.
Continental Airlines Important Notice <I> Operations at Houston Intercontinental Airport (IAH) will be suspended from approximately 12:00 Noon on Fri., Sept. 12 through Sat., Sept. 13. </I> Maybe some other airline will be attempting to make 9:15 pm arrivals in Houston, but it doesn't look like it will be SW or Continental.
Harrisment -- Jeff Masters blog is dire regarding storm surge as well... http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1080&tstamp=200809 Ike is now larger than Katrina was, both in its radius of tropical storm force winds--275 miles--and in it radius of hurricane force winds--115 miles. For comparison, Katrina's tropical storm and hurricane force winds extended out 230 and 105 miles, respectively. Ike's huge wind field has put an extraordinarily large volume of ocean water in motion. When this swirling column of water hits the shallow waters of the Continental Shelf, it will be be forced up into a large storm surge which will probably rival the massive storm surge of Hurricane Carla of 1961. Carla was a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds at landfall, and drove a 10 foot or higher storm surge to a 180-mile stretch of Texas coast. A maximum storm surge of 22 feet was recorded at Port Lavaca, Texas. Despite the fact that the center of Carla hit over 120 miles southwest of Houston, the hurricane drove a 15-foot storm surge into the bays along the south side of the city. I don't expect Ike will reach Category 4 strength, thus its maximum surge is not likely to reach the extreme values above 20 feet seen in Hurricane Carla. Like Carla, though, Ike will probably inundate a 180-mile stretch of Texas coast from Port O'Connor to just north of Galveston with a 10-15 foot storm surge. This will occur even if Ike is a Category 1 storm at landfall. The latest experimental storm surge forecast From NOAA's SLOSH model (Figure 1) shows a 10% chance that Ike's storm surge will exceed 15-21 feet at Galveston. The Galveston sea wall is 17 feet high, so it may get overtopped. The amount of water Ike has put in motion is about 50% greater than what Katrina did, and thus we can expect Ike's storm surge damage will be similar to or greater than Katrina's. The way we can estimate this damage potential is to compute the total energy of Ike's surface winds (kinetic energy). To do this, we must look at how strong the winds are, and factor in the areal coverage of these winds. Thus, we compute the Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE) by squaring the velocity of the wind and summing over all regions of the hurricane with tropical storm force winds or higher. This "Integrated Kinetic Energy" was recently proposed by Dr. Mark Powell of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division as a better measure of the destructive power of a hurricane's storm surge than the usual Category 1-5 Saffir-Simpson scale. For example, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi as a strong Category 3 hurricane, yet its storm surge was more characteristic of a Category 5 storm. Dr. Powell came up with a new scale to rate potential storm surge damage based on IKE (not to be confused with Hurricane Ike!) The new scale ranges from 1-6. Katrina and Wilma at their peaks both earned a 5.1 on this scale (Figure 2). At 9:30am EDT this morning, Ike earned a 5.6 on this scale, the highest kinetic energy of any Atlantic storm in the past 40 years. All this energy is also going into the waves in the Gulf of Mexico, and the offshore oil rigs can expect to receive a terrific battering. At 8:50am CDT, waves at the Buoy 42001 180nm south of Louisiana were 28 feet and growing. NOAA's Wavewatch III model is predicting wave heights up to 13 meters from Ike on Friday. For comparison, Hurricane Ivan of 2004 generated 27 meter high waves in the Gulf of Mexico. Surf heights of 15 feet have been reported at beaches along the Florida Panhandle, and tides are also running extremely high. Tides are 2-4 feet above normal along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the west coast of Florida, and one foot above normal in Galveston. The water level will continue to rise as Ike approaches Texas, and NOAA's experimental storm surge forecast (Figure 1) is calling for a 10% chance that the storm tide from Ike will reach 24-27 feet on the south and east sides of Houston.
Harrisment...and then this from the Chronicle chat: Eric Berger: Honestly, I'm not sure there has been enough panic with Ike. On its present forecast track the storm will bring a devastating surge to Galveston Island.
If this does push this kind of surge in...Galveston city officials are gonna get criticized like crazy for not working evacuation quicker.
Not good. I'm worried about my family in Deer Park. They are not in the mandatory evac zone this time, but La Porte and Pasadena are which are right next to them. They're planning on riding it out in DP.
You've been monitoring that site all day so you could post this, haven't you? Oh yeah, well the JERK airport called and they're running flights in and out of Houston all night long!!!
