IKE 2008 - Main Thread
 

How about a central thread for Hurricane Ike?

There are several threads on the storm and I thought it would be cool and easier for folks to follow if there was a single, "ultimate" thread. Perhaps this is a "herding cats" exercise, but worth a try.

I lived in Houston in '83 and will not soon forget the night Alicia came through. Ike looks like it may top the destruction of Alicia.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221239435.jpg

Ike's gonna slap Texas like he used to slap Tina!

Kurt, I title you "official thread uniter".

Geraldo Rivera just got swept off his feet in the surge on live TV; that was funny. :D

All your thread are unite by me!

My brother in law is a pilot for Continental out of Houston. Looks like they are in for a challenging weekend. Sure hope the folks along the coast take this serious and GTHO! 20'+ storm surge is terrifying.

Gotta love Google Earth...
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221240078.jpg

Lots of webcams here:
http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/layers_ve.html?&inc=true&cam=true#

A quick look and I was able to find quite a bit of flooding in Galveston.

I was looking for the NOAA "water rise" map which shows the extent of the predicted storm surge, but found this in the process. It's a map of Harris county's live rain gauges and stream level sensors: http://www.hcoem.org/HCRainfall.aspx

If you hover your mouse over a particular measurement, you'll get a new window where you can check the stream/bayou level.

While this isn't a real-time "surge" measurement, it will be interesting to watch in the hours ahead. A lot of water is getting pushed up towards Houston, to say the least.

Texas is getting its crach slappedSmileWavy

Here's a weather station that is about 4 blocks away from my house. You can watch things change over the next 18 hours.

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KTXHOUST189

If that station does down, that means that my neighborhood was wiped off the face of the planet (no big lost, huh?)

Direct TV is simulcasting the local cbs affiliate, channel 361 if you have direct tv. The pics coming from Galveston are frightening. Speculation is that the entire island will be underwater tommorrow. Those places east of houston, ie beumont will probably get the worst wind. If the track maintains its current projection the eye will dissect houston, straight ukp I-45. We are anticipating 15 to 20 hrs of 75mph winds in houston. Hope ya'll filled your tanks with gas because this is gonna cause a jump at the pump.

2 hours ago (10:45AM Central) in Surfside!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221241365.jpg

We'll see in 18 minutes, but right now, the track has the eye coming over my house right around sunrise, which means I *might* be able to get pics of the eyewall. I would enjoy that very much.

Thanks for the heads-up re 361 on DirecTV! I'm getting this feed in San Diego.

The video is remarkable. :O

Take care and be safe!

Best,

Everyone watching this...remember, the water you're seeing flood over Galveston is from a storm that is still 200 MILES away...12 hours away from landfall.

It's already flooding much of the island, and other coastal communities. They're seeing flooding like what they see from the normal BIG hurricane.

This thing is gearing up to redefine what Texas thinks of when it comes to storms.

We already have some pretty good flooding in Wichita, with a few rescues, school cancellations, and a lot of blocked roads. That's pre-Ike. Who would think that a hurricane would cause trouble in KS?

Check out the sides of the interstate
http://www.houstontranstar.org/snapshots/cctv/170.jpg

this camera is the entrance to my neighborhood. The entrance is just off camera to the right.

http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/cctv/transtar/by_roadway.html?mnu=street&rd=Tanner

http://www.houstontranstar.org/snaps...=1221242200261

The video of the the Galveston seawall looks pretty ominous. It looks like the seawall is at gulf level when actually it's normally about a 16' dropoff.

At 4am it was 105mph and at 10am it was still 105mph, so we've decided to stay. The only reason we left for Rita was that it was Cat 5 aimed right at us. I'm not worried about the storm surge and winds should only be about 80mph at our house. Losing power won't be much fun though, but we have plenty of beer (and water & food) and we're in contact with other neighbors that have stayed.

Latest from Houston Chronicle - look at that track, right over Galveston and the Houston CBD!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221246898.jpg

Funny comment from Eric Berger (SciGuy @ chron.com); he's doing a live Q&A session here: http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2008/09/live_chat_on_ik_4.html

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1221247749.jpg

Ha! :D