Hurricane Ike Turner

OK, this could be bad.

We won't really know until it actually gets here, but it could be bad. We've decided to stay here, mainly because none of our neighbors in Sienna Plantation are bailing out, and they probably know more about hurricanes than we do - especially since this is our very first hurricane ever. And anyway, we don't want to miss our first hurricane. I'm all about experiences.

So far, it looks like Ike is going to come ashore and tramp right through the middle of Fort Bend county, where we live. It's kind of hard to figure out exactly where it will go in relation to our home, because the scale they have to use on this is huge.

So, I decided to make use of blogging technology to keep everyone updated. The updates will, of course, cease abruptly in the case of a power outage, or a flooded study.

At the moment (2:45 pm Thursday), they expect Ike to roll ashore tomorrow afternoon. We may have some winds and outer bands or stuff before then, but they will likely be more like the usual rain storms that don't really hurt anything. By Friday night, we should have high winds and hard rain. By that, I mean that we are promised 75 mph winds - but the barometric pressure inside the eye suggests the possibility of 125 mph winds. If it gets that high, we may have windows blown in. Jeff has suggested that we put tape on the windows in an X shape, which apparently gives them more strength. Jeff has been in many hurricanes in his day.

We aren't really worried about flooding here in the Plantation, because we have a 50 ft. elevation and lots of strong levees.

The evacuation from Galveston has begun in earnest, and the roads started getting majorly clogged by people fleeing the low lying areas to our south - Pearland and the other 775 zip code areas - about an hour ago. I got back from my dental appointment as it was getting thicker. We're watching channel 2, which seems to be the most reliable and up to date, much as channel 3 was back in Wichita Falls (good old Skip McBride).

I have brought in all loose objects from the yard: gardening tools, buckets, potted plants and so forth. I need to also bring in the burglar warning from out front, even though it's stuck deep in the ground. If it does get pulled out, it will become a deadly missile indeed.

Feel free to leave comments on this blog. I think I have it set where you can, but I am going to go make sure in a moment that it allows comments by non-registered folks. I will put the updates on the actual blog area; check to see if there is a newer blog entry, but I plan to just keep updating this one.

---update, 9-11, 3:25 pm---
Galveston is already flooding in the lowest areas. Storm surge is already here. wow.

---update, 3:32 pm, or 1532---
They say now that we may be enduring hurricane force winds for 18 hours.

---update, 1615 (or 4:15)---
The "track" they keep talking about is mostly just an educated guess, though apparently very well educated. We just heard that the track (which is an average of the various computer models, aka spaghetti) has shifted slightly northward. This is bad for Houston downtown, but good for harB and GA and Wm. We are now predicted to be on the "clean"side of the storm, which means the winds will be not so bad (75 mph or less), and they will be from the north instead of from the south. Most of our southern exposure consists of windows, on both of our two stories. But the north side of the house has only ground level windows. The upper level is one massive brick wall.
So we will wait until tomorrow morning to tape the windows.
In any case, the wind and rain (outlying tropical rains) will probably begin about 0100 hours tonight, and won't become severe until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest, and probably Friday evening. We still get trash pickup tomorrow morning, so I will likely take it out to the street after sun up depending on how hard it's blowing - and bring the empty container in as soon as they dump it into their Tonka truck.

Meanwhile, the surge has arrived on Galveston Island already - this is a little surprising to the weather folks here, and probably means something, though I don't know what, exactly.

---update, 2049 (8:49 pm)---
A while ago we heard the neighbor hammering plywood over his windows. In the dark. That makes me a little nervous.
They're supposed to update the track in another hour.

---update, 9:08 pm---
The county judge here says that Saturday is going to be "ugly." I don't like the sound of that.

---update, 10:10 pm---
The new track says even further east. Still not good for Houston, but better for us. The good news: they say it could possibly come ashore as a category 2, which would be a wonderful thing. Also we won't have tropical force winds until after 7 am tomorrow, and no hurricane stuff until maybe 5 or so in the afternoon. But the bad news is that surge. It could reach a 20-25 ft. storm surge if it hits Galveston directly. And even if it misses, it could be 18 ft. That's well over the sea wall.

But the track, remember, is sort of an average. Some of the trackettes go directly over Ft. Bend county. If so, we will see the eye in our first hurricane.

---update, 10:50 pm---
Have you looked at the satellite image? This storm is huge! It fits neatly just inside the shape of the entire Gulf of Mexico. And it looks like it's going to go straight into the ship channel, which is really bad news for downtown Houston. Also, by this time, hurricane Rita had changed her direction, which is what many were hoping for this time around. It has not happened.

===update, 730, 9/12/08===
Good morning. The track is still pretty much right where it was, so that's probably going to be it. No sudden shift to the north, just rolling along on schedule, with murder in its eye. It's likely going to move right up the ship channel, flood downtown Houston without mercy, and we here in the Plantation can expect some strong winds and rain from the east, then from the north. We could see the eye sometime before it's all over (that would be a bonus), but most likely we'll see sheets of rain on our north facing windows. I really hope that we don't see sheets of rain blowing onto our living room floor.

---update, 1034---
I went on my morning walk. I figured I might as well, since the rain won't start for a while yet. The sky was sunny and blue at 8:30, cooler than usual, which is to say warm but not stifling.

An odd thing happened. The air had been perfectly still, but suddenly a strong, steady breeze came up from the north. It held for about five minutes as I continued down the path, then faded to a gentle breeze from the east. By the time I got back to my neighborhood at 9:30, I could look to the sky and sea clouds moving in a relatively fast arc, traveling from the east to the north and then to the south. These must have been the first signs of the hurricane.

I met some neighbors out talking on the sidewalk, so I joined them for a bit. One was surprised that so few people had boarded their windows. But others had the same view I did - we have no idea how to install the plywood necessary to protect anything. Do we drill holes into the bricks? The mortar? Won't that damage the mortar? Besides, I don't have a ladder long enough to reach the upper windows, I don't have a skill saw or the skill to shape it to fit, and besides, the Home Depots are out of plywood by now. Some had taken pictures of the long lines outside Home Depot and Lowe's, waiting to buy plywood if any came in. Another says if the winds get to 100 mph, he's going to go outside and lean in it for fun.

We're getting different estimates from different sources, but some say the winds will be 50-75 mph, some say 75-110. I don't think anyone really knows. Some tell me that tape on the windows will help protect them, others (including the Weather Channel™) insist that it will do no good at all. Most in my neighborhood say that the windows will generally be fine anyway, at least in our area.

We both showered and put on clean clothes, I'm doing a last load of laundry as we speak, and we have two large camp bladders full of water to drink, and when it starts raining I'm going to put the cell phone on the charger to top off the battery. Local officials are telling us if we're in the flood areas, to evacuate yesterday, but if we're not, "hunker down." That's Texan for stay put, hold tight. If the eye passes over us, I plan to get pictures and video if at all possible, but if that happens we will be in for higher winds, so who knows?

By the way, the comments you guys have left have made me feel good. You don't know how much my friends mean to me. Or maybe you do.

---1100---
Holy cow.
The local TV coverage on channel 2 just featured an interview with a guy who says he's going to stay - on Galveston, not the mainland. He says he's staying because he loves the elemental energy, and he has salt water in his soul. There's a TFM for you.

The authorities have a recommendation for such people: make sure you have an ID of some kind fastened securely to your body so they can ID you if you're recovered after the storm.

The background for the interview was the sight of the waves crashing against the seawall, splashing thirty feet into the air, and coming down in a huge foaming mass toward the camera. That's right: the 15 foot seawall in Galveston is about to be topped. When it does, soon, they will remove all the reporters and cameras, because the island will be underwater. Not just flooded, you New Age moron, underwater! The nearest land will be the coast of Texas, and all the elemental energy in the world will not enable you to swim that far. Each wave crashing into the island's pathetic little seawall has enough force to kill you if it hits you while you're treading water.

There are some brave souls who are going to ride this one out on the mainland, and they are risking their lives to do it, but staying on Galveston island when this thing actually comes over it, with a 20 ft (or higher) surge? Stay tuned as we clean the gene pool.

I think I will close this entry, and begin a new one. See the menu at the left for a link to Riding the Storm Out.

Comments are still enabled!

Houston, we have a - what was that, anyway?

I suppose there are an infinite number of ways to compare cities. One common way is by crime statistics. Houston has an exceptionally high crime rate, higher even than Wichita Falls. Midland has a relatively low rate, and Missouri City (where my mail is processed) has an even lower one.

Another, more useful comparison would be the percentage of TFM's encountered on the streets and highways. Oh, you aren't familiar with that acronym? Let's bring you up to speed. A TFM is a Total Freaking Moron, but you can adjust the acronym as you please. It could also stand for Terribly Foolish Moron, but the point is that these drivers are morons, and not just normal standard-issue morons.

A standard-issue moron is a person who tailgates, speeds, and generally takes risks that don't need to be taken. He drives aggressively, he uses a cell phone without bothering to compensate for the distraction, he believes that he is a good driver when he isn't a good driver by any stretch of the imagination. These people are everywhere, and the percentage from city to city doesn't really vary enough to be statistically relevant. You see them all the time, on virtually every drive home from work. They irritate you, they make you a little more defensive as you continue your drive.

But a TFM is an amazing creature to behold. One sees them in action and one either utters an expletive involuntarily, or one prays for divine protection and truly means it. While the normal moron will change lanes suddenly and without warning, nearly taking your bumper with him, the TFM will do it in an 18-wheeler. While the normal moron will make a left turn from the right lane, forcing you to slam on your brakes, the TFM will make the same turn across four lanes of busy traffic, causing a multi-car pile up. While a normal moron will weave in and out of busy lanes of thick traffic to gain perhaps an extra car length or two, the TFM will do it at 90 mph, and his weaving will involve six lanes of traffic at once, just before darting to make his exit on the opposite side of the freeway. That's a TFM.

He is incapable, I suppose, of assessing risk - the odds of a given action resulting in unwanted consequences as opposed to the goal or reward, the degree of that unwanted consequence, and the size or quality of the reward - all at the same time. He only gets as far as "if I can get from point A to point B faster, I won't have to wait as long." He rarely considers "if I kill myself on the way, I won't even get to point B." He never considers "the minor goal of getting to point B two minutes sooner isn't remotely worth the high risk of severe pain or death involved."

I estimate the TFM percentage in Wichita Falls to be about 4%, based on living in Wichita county most of my life. For Midland, maybe 2% at the most. Sugar Land or Missouri City would be about 6%, with the worst coming out at rush hour and going dormant the rest of the time. But Houston.... I would put the score at no less than 10%. If you aren't used to Houston traffic, you cannot possibly drive more than thirty minutes without your jaw dropping to your lap in amazement at least once. You cannot remain indifferent when you have seen a motorcycle on the service road, his crying, tormented little engine audible from high on the expressway, racing at 100 mph, down there precisely because there are fewer cars in the way, which means that he won't have to weave through them quite so much. Is he wearing a helmet? I'll let you guess.

Even on a short drive, you will typically see about three cars each minute blow by you at 30 mph over the prevailing speed (never mind the speed limit). You get used to it pretty quickly, and you figure out that to deal with it, you simply stay in your lane and ignore them. You assume that if you don't do anything unexpected, they will likely miss you, much as the bats do if you get caught in a cave at sundown when they awaken. And, on the bright side, TFM's don't pee on you as they pass. Well, they haven't so far, at least.

Now, the one good thing about having such a high TFM score is that the other 90% learn to be very good drivers - careful and logical. They learn the importance of driving close to the prevailing speed, regardless of the posted limit. If the limit is 60, but the traffic is moving steadily at 50, we all go 50. If it's going 65, we all go 65, because driving at a speed that's too different, whether slower or faster, is more dangerous than merely speeding is by itself. People try to keep a distance between them and the car ahead if possible (not the distance recommended back in driver's ed - that's not possible in Houston), and though there is a tendency to push the amber lights and thus run the reds, they generally don't floor the accelerator to do this when the car in front has applied his brakes to stop at the light. The TFM's, of course, do this all the time, and then slam on the brakes, coming to rest sideways just inches behind the next car - if all goes well, that is. (Oh, yes, they do. When I see this about to happen, I move to the rightmost edge of my lane to increase the chances of being missed by the tire-screaming missile to my left).

A friend of mine who used to live here said to me the other day, "Do you know what most parents in Houston give their kids for their first car?" The answer: a Piñata.