Ike
If you haven't been following my Weather Nerd blogging... well, you might not know it from the national media (which has seemingly missed the memo that Ike is going to be WAY WORSE THAN GUSTAV, which got about 50 times more advance coverage), but here's the gist: Hurricane Ike, although "only" a Category 2, is going to be a catastrophe because of its massive storm surge, which is more typical of a Category 4, and its track, which is taking it directly into the Galveston Island and Galveston Bay.
The city of Galveston (from which, reportedly, 24,000 people refused to evacuate!) is about to be totally destroyed, or nearly so, and there is going to be a ton of devastation all along Galveston Bay and its estuaries, in residential and industrial areas alike, including the Houston oil refineries and such. This is a very big deal. Lots of surge damage up north, too, in Port Arthur and southwestern Louisiana.
MORNING UPDATE: The computer models and experts were wrong; the storm surge was far less severe than predicted.
Still, Ike was plenty bad. Ongoing updates at Weather Nerd.
The city of Galveston (from which, reportedly, 24,000 people refused to evacuate!) is about to be totally destroyed, or nearly so, and there is going to be a ton of devastation all along Galveston Bay and its estuaries, in residential and industrial areas alike, including the Houston oil refineries and such. This is a very big deal. Lots of surge damage up north, too, in Port Arthur and southwestern Louisiana.
MORNING UPDATE: The computer models and experts were wrong; the storm surge was far less severe than predicted.
Still, Ike was plenty bad. Ongoing updates at Weather Nerd.
posted by Brendan Loy at
9/12/2008 09:53:00 PM
