Oh FU Ike, Just F. U.

Stupid storm.

I went to wallyworld with the rest of Houston at 10:30 PM. for water and batteries and course ground coffee for the french press. Oh, I am HAVING coffee, storm be damned.

Hopefully everything will be fine. We are about 45 miles from the gulf, so I am not expecting it to be too bad. We only briefly lost power during Rita, and this one is on the same path. I hope it stays that way and hits east of Houston so we will be on the clean side. Sorry, Louisiana, but I don't want the flooding and tornadoes, either.

Glad I don't have a home in Galveston.

University of Texas at Austin has this nifty storm surge animation they have that shows the Galveston Island and how much the water would cover with a Category 5 hurricane. It has been a while since that has happened. It is interesting to look at though.

Actually, there is a place I would like to have a home in Galveston. There is this place on the beach, between two neighborhoods with giant, gorgeous multi-million dollar homes that is owned by the state of Texas. Apparently, you buy a very small lot, put on a tiny trailer (they have a size limitation) and you can build whatever else you want on it. A lot of people build large elaborate decks. You walk right out and on to the beach. There is a nice pool on the property. If a hurricane comes and blows away your tiny trailer, shell out another 10K and get another one. The insurance cannot be as ridiculous as it is for houses on the beach. I think that is a great idea for a weekend spot.

THAT I could live with. I could never take the stress of worrying about my nice beautiful house getting washed away by a hurricane, and was I up to date on my $20,000 a year insurance.

Ike is supposed hit tomorrow afternoon. I am hoping to retain power the whole time, but I am not counting on it. I am hoping the Houston people sit tight and let all the people south of us evacuate. I think all of the deaths from Rita in our area were people that died because of the traffic issue. (gah.. those poor elderly on the bus)

I am watching the news. There are already waves lapping up under the houses on stilts on Treasure Island. I am looking at a road along the beach that is completely flooded. It is a gorgeous day outside, no rain, no unusual wind, but the water is already rising because of what is going on in the gulf. Freaky.

Wind

The peak wind for my area is predicted to be 97 mph. That doesn't sound that bad, but I don't really know how fast that is. I am assuming that can down some power lines.

Writer's Block: 9/11

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I was working at Bank One. I was on the elevator and heard someone talking about planes crashing. When I walked into my office (a cubicle farm) and everyone was standing, looking stunned. I asked what happened. One of the managers told me that a plane hit one of the towers of the world trade center. My legs weakened a bit. I was stunned. I walked to my desk and logged in. There were no calls coming in. None. I generally took anywhere from 80-132 calls a day. No one was calling any of the 200 people in my office.

I logged onto CNN and saw the news as a second plane hit. I started crying. That is not unusual. I am freaky sensitive and am actually crying now as I remember the event. I was just quietly crying and refreshing the news pages.

A call came in and I answered it. While on the phone with the gentleman, I was reading about a plane being missing. I thought of my sister working next to the FBI building on the other side of town. I wanted her out of the area. There was no reason to think a plane was headed there, but all I knew was someone was targeting symbolic buildings and I was worried about my sister. The call was hard to finish. The gentleman offered to let me go and he would call back later, but I told him it was fine and finished the call.

I opted to not leave at noon when it was offered. I did leave at 3. I went to pick my son up at the YMCA. He was 7 years old. I asked him if he knew what had happened that day. He vaguely knew. I explained. His first question was if the president was okay. My sister and I watched the news for days and sobbed for days. We understood what what coming because of it. Connor kept bringing us kleenex and paper towels for our tears. How was I supposed to explain to a 7 year old what horrors we do to each other? I told him that we should just pray for peace for the souls of those that had died and peace for the people that do such horrible things to each other so that they can stop.

Seven years later and I still cry.

Yesterday, Connor was shown a film about 9/11 in school (he is now a high school freshman). He talked about seeing things he had not previously noticed like the people jumping out or falling out of the windows. Some of his classmates were crying.

I hope that neither Con nor I ever live through such an event again.

Well that is just Effing scary. . .

Way to scare the poop out of me wunderground.com


Hurricane Ike's winds remain at Category 2 strength, but Ike is a freak storm with extreme destructive storm surge potential. Ike's pressure fell rapidly last night to 944 mb, but the hurricane did not respond to the pressure change by increasing its maximum winds in the eyewall. Instead, Ike responded by increasing the velocity of its winds away from the eyewall, over a huge stretch of the Gulf of Mexico . . . This very unusual structure makes forecasting the future intensity of Ike nearly impossible. The possibilities range from a Category 1 storm at landfall--as predicted by the HWRF model--to a Category 4 storm at landfall, as predicted by the GFDL. (note: The GFDL model is considered the most accurate over the past few years.)

Ike is now larger than Katrina was. . . 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. Like Carla. . . Ike will probably inundate a 180-mile stretch of Texas coast . . . with a 10-15 foot storm surge. . . The latest experimental storm surge forecast . . . 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. (Note: the height of The sea wall is closer to 15-16 feet due to confusion between whether to measure against sea level or mean low tide.)

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). 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.

We must assume Ike will intensify to a Category 3 hurricane by landfall, which would likely do $20-$30 billion in damage. The chances of hundreds of people being killed in this storm is high if people do not heed evacuation orders to leave low-lying areas threatened by high storm surges. Ike's storm surge is going to be affect a huge area and be tremendously destructive.

helps me feel a little better

but not by much.

http://www.houstonhidefromthewind.org has a map of zip codes. If you hover over your zip code, it gives a damage prediction for your area for hurricane Ike.

Mine is saying 97mph forecasted right now and roofing material, door, window damage, considerable damage to vegetation, mobile homes, etc.

So I am expecting the house to be standing when this is done. That is good. :)

SHIT

you know what, Ike.. you want to keep this turning northeast shit, just go ahead and go straight north. How about that?


Glad to know it doesn't seem to be intensifying though. That is something.

 

Houston is under that little rectangle that says Saturday 1:00 AM.