Photo Op I could do without.

This mornings newest official track put Ike almost over my house Saturday morning. The tidal surge at Galveston will probably be at the bottom of the beach house. Work told us to not come in Friday. At least that gives me time to get the generator tied in at my parents and chainsaw some of the limbs closer to the house. The last time we had to do this much was 1983 when Alicia came through. We should start seeing the winds late tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening.

Yes, what Bob said!  We'll pray for you.

Ryan, are you going or staying? I'm not sure what side of town you're on.

Of course a lack of response may be an answer!


Latest prediction for Bolivar Penninsula where our beach house is has the tide surge at 15 feet. The house is about 5 feet above sea level and 8 feet off the ground. Plus the waves will probably be blown flat so they should only crest 3-5 feet. Insurance companies are going to be busy.

As a side note the seawall at Galveston island is only 10 feet tall, but they raised the island several feet after the 1900 hurricane. The storm chasers that like to hang out at The Galvez and San Louis hotels should have some great footage showing up by Saturday morning.

As it stands now we're staying put.  We're in Katy, so we're pretty far inland. We left for Rita and it wound up being a mistake so we figure this time we'll hang around and deal with the wind.  We're far enough in where any type of surge really isn't an issue.  Local flooding maybe, although our house is several feet higher than the surrounding houses.  And it's a pretty new subdivision so there aren't any big tree limbs to worry about.  The only reason we'll leave is if there are extended power issues after the fact.  Hopefully in a new subdivision with buried power lines that'll be less of an issue.  We stocked up on water and supplies when Gustav was threatening so we've got all of that already.

What part of town are you in John?  Is that beach house as in vacation beach house or do you live on the beach?

The beach house is just a vacation home that the family all shares.

I'm about 20 min. north of you in Hockley between 290 and 2920.

Most people don't realize it, but a two foot over normal tide makes water back up the storm drains on the island. The Balanise Room is screwed (look up ZZ Top songs). Our place is on Bolivar which had 6 foot of water over Hwy 87 already this morning near High Island. Of course the news holes don't point out that high tide comes up to the edge of the road. Coast Guard is still pulling out some of the idiots who stayed on the penninsula. Bolivar and Galveston will probably be sand bars in the gulf for about 24 hours. How some people didn't realize this when they live there is beyond me.

At least the network reporters won't have to jump in puddles this time to prove that it rained.

I got the generator wired up, they just filled the propane tank for the house, limbs are trimmed back and the windows on the east side are covered. My wife is over at her mothers helping them get ready until we get some of the winds in. Then we'll kick back with a cold one and see what happens. We're on the dry side now so it's not as bad as it could have been for us.

You get tornadoes like we get snow. I worry about the tornadoes in this more than the wind. They're short and small but sometimes there's a lot of them. You won't see the big, mile wide town killers with this.
The storm will probably take almost 24 hours to completely pass so we'll get some good wind out of it. Probably 70-90mph here for a little while. Higher on the coast. Ike's only a mediocre cat 2 so it's not all that bad. It just has a bigger than normal storm surge so the media's having a field day at Galveston.

So far, so good. At least we got good sunset out of it. Looks like things will get really interesting here about 5am tomorrow morning.