I thought with this season being much busier than last year and Hurricane Gustav having had such a wide influence on the weather in just under half the United States so far I thought it might be good to have a central place to check in, sort of like how we did with Gustav - who is where, what are they doing, etc...

So with Ike now being tracked to head towards the FLA Keys and even possibly into the Gulf...what are y'all in South FLA going to do?

Hanna might be a hurricane today but then will go back to just being a TS and dumping a bunch of rain before heading for Ireland next week.

I'm still cleaning up from Gustav. It's going to be a little while until things are finally done.

Watching Ike real close on account of our little place down in Panacea Florida.......

I see they've got the track heading right over Key West now and basically headed for, at least one of them, Biloxi. Watch them nudge it over further west and come to Louisiana.

In 2002 we had 2 storms, Tropical Storm Isidore and Hurricane Lili strike 7 days apart. Florida has had 4 storms hit it several seasons (not all direct hits, like 2004) and I think 2 seasons of 5 storms (1800s).

Huh. Well, I've got to leave on the 10th to go on tour - I guess I won't unpack anything from Gustav, just put it all back up in the attic and hope for the best. My girlfriend, however, might feel a little differently since I'll be gone.

We are getting pummeled by Hanna right now. Circulation isn't even close, and its gusty and raining cats and dogs. 2 inches and counting. Those close to the Chesapeake and the Potomac are gonna have a bunch of water. I have a BAD feeling about Ike too. Get to high ground.

JR

Hanna is going to go to Ireland and England. That should be fun for y'all over there.

Maybe. Are these storms very windy when they get over there?

Yeah, 4 inches of rain, just since I checked this morning. The creek in my yard looks like the Colorado River!

JR

Wait until you get the 20 plus inches like Fay did in FLA! That will be fun.

YIKES.....luckily, this one is moving fast, we should only get around ten.

JR

The projected path for Ike is starting to get people on edge. Gustav was more damaging than Katrina - for Louisiana. But Ike could be like Katrina and hit New Orleans, unlike Katrina.

And that would not be good.

I don't like Ike!

Someone just turned me onto this website today. Pretty good!

[www.stormpulse.com]

Yeah you know Ike is going to be serious when the University of Texas postpones a football game.

"It's just some friends of mine and they're busting down the door"

We're battening down the hatches here in San Antonio. People are going crazy buying up bottled water, etc. My husband and me? We just made sure we had enough beer for the weekend.

Everything is cancelled - there'd best be a lot of rain just so we have something to look at, especially if the power goes out.

My thoughts are with those in Houston and Galveston and that area - I fear they are going to get hammered.

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DaisyGrace
My thoughts are with those in Houston and Galveston and that area - I fear they are going to get hammered.

Yeah, looks like it may hit just south of Galveston. If anything, they would want it to go north so as not to get the strongest surge.
We're feeling the outer bands here in New Orleans. Shows how large this storm is.

Interesting article on the 1900 Galveston hurricane: [en.wikipedia.org]

Edith Grove, I was wondering if anyone else knew about the devastating hurricane of 1900 - it just flattened Galveston. There's a GREAT book out about it, called Isaac's Storm.

Here's the Amazon link in case you (or anyone) want to check it out. Isaac's Storm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-09-12 04:40 by DaisyGrace.

Last time I visited Galveston, right after the Houston show in December '05, I saw the documentary film about the hurricane shown at the museum right off The Strand.
I also stumbled upon the Dickens on The Strand Festival, held on the first weekend of December every year. Great time to visit Galveston.

Absolutely! I've done both - seen the film and been to Dickens on the Strand (many times).

I love Galveston - great, great weekend getaway.

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DaisyGrace
Edith Grove, I was wondering if anyone else knew about the devastating hurricane of 1900 - it just flattened Galveston. There's a GREAT book out about it, called Isaac's Storm.

Another good book - not exactly "about" the storm, but it is pivotal. Excellent Toronto writer - his Civilization is also worth a read: [www.straight.com]

A little interesting info on Ike:

First hurricane to have the outflow over Florida and Texas at the same time as well as cover the most area of the Gulf Of Mexico.

From Jeff Masters at wunderground.com:

"Ike is larger than Katrina was, both in its radius of tropical storm force winds--275 miles--and in it radius of hurricane force winds--115 miles. For comparison, Katrina's tropical storm and hurricane force winds extended out 230 and 105 miles, respectively. Ike's surge will probably rival the massive storm surge of Hurricane Carla of 1961. Carla was a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds at landfall, and drove a 10 foot or higher storm surge to a 180-mile stretch of Texas coast. A maximum storm surge of 22 feet was recorded at Port Lavaca, Texas. Despite the fact that the center of Carla hit over 120 miles southwest of Houston, the hurricane drove a 15-foot storm surge into the bays along the south side of the city. Ike's maximum surge is not likely to reach the extreme values above 20 feet seen in Hurricane Carla, though."

ALSO:
The total energy of Ike
"The amount of water Ike has put in motion is about 10% 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). To do this, we must look at how strong the winds are, and factor in the areal coverage of these winds. Thus, we compute the Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE) by squaring the velocity of the wind and summing over all regions of the hurricane with tropical storm force winds or higher. This "Integrated Kinetic Energy" was recently proposed by Dr. Mark Powell of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division as a better measure of the destructive power of a hurricane's storm surge than the usual Category 1-5 Saffir-Simpson scale. For example, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi as a strong Category 3 hurricane, yet its storm surge was more characteristic of a Category 5 storm. Dr. Powell came up with a new scale to rate potential storm surge damage based on IKE (not to be confused with Hurricane Ike!) The new scale ranges from 1-6. Katrina and Wilma at their peaks both earned a 5.1 on this scale (Figure 2). At 12:30pm EDT today, Ike earned a 5.2 on this scale, the second highest kinetic energy of any Atlantic storm in the past 40 years. Hurricane Isabel of 2003 had the highest."

I think the fact that Ike has such a huge surge with it should really concern people in Galveston and Houston - Katrina's highest point of surge was 41.6 feet in Waveland, MS and varied along the rest of the coast of MS from 38 to 28 feet. if Ike hauls that kind of surge with him on shore, if I'm not mistaken, that would put all of Galveston under the Gulf Of Mexico, as well as most homes.

Camille was the previous highest at 35. Although Wilma had the lowest pressure ever and has been deemed the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic Basin ever, no hurricane has yet to match Camille's sustained winds of 190 with gusts to 220 (and probably higher).

Ominous:

[www.cnn.com]

The surge in Mandeville, LA is as high as it was for Gustav. The highest wind recorded in New Orleans so far is 65.

Galveston is...goddamn, the video of the Gulf there is astounding. And it's just getting going.

Gonna be a long fall for SE Texas.

We live in Houston and I hate to admit, we are all pretty excited about this. Gonna be an exciting night. We have had so many "misses" over the years...it looks like this one is coming. Already getting pretty windy outside and we have 8 hours till landfall.

Good luck to all the folks down Texas way....we had 10 plus inches of rain, but only gusty winds from Hanna here in Sweet Virginia. Hard to imagine Ike--Does Tina live somewhere down that way?.....its a hard rain a-gonna fall.

DB

I lived in Beaumont during the Carla and Cindy storms in the early sixties-people running up and down our street in motorboats! How highs the water,Mama?

The approach of Gustav over New Orleans:




Geraldo Rivera spots a rescue worker IN the Industrial Canal, securing something during the height of the storm:




More pictures from last week:

I heard that ZZ TOP Bassist Dusty Hill lives right on the Bay. Did some research and sure enough he does or did. Here is an Ad for his house, I do not know if it was sold. Check out pic #13 Hope he's okay, the band has a couple weeks off now, they canceled their last 2 shows this weekend.

[search.har.com]

Those videos are really scary. Good luck to all of you

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Keep On Rolling

Good luck everyone - this sounds worse than Gustav.

I'm watching the coverage of Hurricane Ike right now on Fox News.
It made landfall in Freeport, Texas about six hours ago. The sun is not up yet, so it's difficult to see how bad the damage really is.
Freeport is just south of Galveston, a major tourist destination.
Since the strongest quadrant of a hurricane is the northeast, Galveston took the brunt of the hurricane's winds and storm surge.
Millions of people in the greater Houston area are without power now, and we'll know more in the next few hours after the sun comes up.

[www.cnn.com]