Riding the Storm Out

---1115, 9/12/2008---
The water is now above the street level in Texas City. They have an info-babe standing ankle deep on the highway, and the water is over the curb, and rising quickly. Yes, this is mainland, Texas, not the island.

Still no rain in Sienna Plantation.

---1145---
The 311 service is no longer in effect in the evacuation zones. If you're in those zones, you can no longer get help leaving. You're on your own.
30 mph wind gusts are reported in the Sugar Land area. That's us. So it begins, but the real ugly stuff is still hours away.

---1305---
We are expecting a 20 ft. surge in the ship channel (that's a correction. Sorry). The actual hurricane eye will come ashore about midnight - 11 hours from now. That means about 1 in the morning it will pass over us, which means I can't take pictures, even if we get the eye. Darn.

The first rain in our area should begin pretty soon. We just went outside and cut flowers from our rose bushes and other flowering plants. We might as well enjoy them indoors, they'd be gone soon anyway.


---1315---
The rain has begun here. The fun begins.
By the way, the distance from the eye and Galveston is, at this moment, the same as the distance between Wichita Falls and Lubbock.

---1343---
Now we're getting rain, then sun, then rain. That's those bands you can see flying away from the hurricane if you're watching it on TV. They've seen 36 ft. waves out at sea near the eye of the storm. Mr. Elemental Energy Guy might not understand that, but most of us can realize that we're talking about 12 yards, more than a first down in football terms, only it's a wall of water that far above your head.

Here are the probables for our own neck of the woods: 10 to 15 inches of rain. Probable 65 mph sustained winds, with gusts to 100, for 12 hours. To imagine that, remember sticking your arm out the window while driving on the interstate. Remember how hard it is to see anything going by as you look at the shoulder of the pavement. Now... have you ever driven at 100 mph? (ahem, er, I would never do that, ahem, er, um). Remember how the bugs splat on the glass so spectacularly? Anyway, that's moving fast.

Getting dark again, here comes more rain.
Ike to Galveston is now only 168 miles and closing.

---1350---
They've narrowed the scope of probable landfall to between Sargent and Galveston. If you take the centerpoint of that range, and assume that Ike goes right to it, in the middle... and draw a line inland... um... that would mean the eye would go just about over us. I'm not sure what kind of pictures I could take of such an event at one in the morning, but it would sure be an experience I would never forget.

But the official track still shows it going east of us, which in terms of property damage and all that is a better scenario.

---1520---
Our sustained winds are now 23 mph, gusts to 25. Nothing really scary yet, then. Our main fascination right now is Galveston Island, where they still have some officials in the upper floors (for now) of the convention center, which is theoretically hurricane proof. Wink wink, nudge, nudge. The thing to understand about this is that the sea wall is already underwater, and the hurricane is still 150 miles out!

We've already been told that there will be no mail service tomorrow, which means they care about their employees here a lot more than they did in Wichita Falls when we had our mile wide tornado in 1979, where I wasn't allowed to go home until we finished the mail, even though I knew that my home was gone and the fate of my family was unknown. (More likely they're worried about the postal jeeps getting damaged).

The air is starting to feel a little funny, beyond just the humidity. It probably has to do with the barometric pressure, but I don't know nuthin bout no barometric pressure.

---update, 1535---
Soon all emergency staff in Galveston will be called in, and as of 9:00 tonight they will no longer answer calls for help of any kind. Three hours later, they will hear from Elemental Energy Guy, when the hurricane actually arrives there.

The first tropical force winds have arrived in San Leon (mainland), so we should have them in an hour or so (4:30?).

---1550---
Ike is now 183 miles away from our little home, sweet home. Surfside, which is already flooded due to the surge, is reporting that there are refrigerators, dumpsters and other debris floating in the water. This is the kind of local color they won't give you on the Weather Channel.

---1600---
A guy on Twitter says the seawall in Port Arthur is almost under water.

---1620---
Remember San Leon? In 20 minutes, it went from dry roads to being too flooded for cars to get through. Only those high tower pickups are making it through, plus a guy on a bicycle with his tires half under water. And it's just the surge - no serious rain there, yet.

Still no tropical winds here in the Plantation.

A guy on Twitter notes that there is a giant crane towering over downtown Houston. I guess there's nothing they can do about it - it's assembled on top of a construction site. But there could be a nasty consequence, I'm thinking.

---1655---
We're starting to get semi-serious gusts of wind. The trees on the other side of the levee, visible from our kitchen door, are doing some real swaying, and making a constant swoosh sound. We are now told that they will have hurricane force winds in Galveston by 6:30. They're announcing curfews for most towns around here, so I assume we in the Plantation are included. As if I were going to get out in a hurricane to go buy a burger. I don't know if the curfew applies to Elemental Energy Guy™ awaiting his death on Galveston Island.

They're saying all cars in Harris county need to be off the road by 6:30, presumably to give them a bit of headroom for avoiding the hurricane winds that will hit Houston shortly after. I still haven't figured out when we start with the hurricane winds - how far in advance of the center do they go?

The eye of this thing is apparently so big (80 to 90 miles across) that we will likely be in it as it passes over, regardless of the track. What we may get is wind from the east, then the calm, and then wind from the west. I'm just guessing that, of course. But if it happens that way, the worst wind will be striking the two brick walls with the fewest windows. One can hope. If so, our neighbors will be happy that we have the two-story home sheltering them.

If we still have power at 1:00 am, or when the eye passes over, I promise to blog about it. If the sky is bright enough to take photos, I will do that.

Meanwhile, GA is asking about taking Hunkering lessons, to make sure that we properly hunker down, as requested by our local officials. I would hate to find that I had unintentionally hunkered up.

---1800, or 6:00 pm---
People in Kemah are starting to worry. They're about 15 ft above sea level, and the water is pouring in from the sea, over their little barrier. TV shows water up to the nozzle on the fire hydrants, which means 16 ft so far. As I watch the live reporting from the scene, I wonder if our Hil would like to be out there, knee deep in salt water, with a microphone in her hand, explaining why the water is so deep, and asking the locals how they feel about it.

They're losing power in Galveston as I write this. They already have uprooted palm trees lying across the road, and there are chunks of a hotel blocking the way, too. No word on when the reporters get to flee the island and go report on the rising water in downtown Kemah, instead of watching each other hang onto utility poles with one hand and a microphone with the other.

The wind is getting stronger here, though we haven't had any rain for the last hour - just wind. But it is getting noticeably stronger. And here it is: sustained winds, 29 mph, gusts to 42. Here we go, folks!

---6:15 pm---
Hurricane force winds have arrived in Galveston, though the eye is still 98 miles away. No word on Mr. EEG.

The guy next door got out his hammer, and he'll putting plywood on his windows as the wind blows. Thanks, guys, for setting the example while I could still have done something about it.



Stay tuned!