Hurricane Ike and Its Impact on Coastal Texas

#101
#101
TennTradition said:
The sad part for him is that he is standing out there thinking that he is in 120-130 mph winds...and he keeps on reporting them from his anemometer. I wish that someone would tell him that it isn't reading mph, it is reading km/hr. There is no way that he is standing up in 130 mph gusts....no way...not even when bracing against a tree. He is actually in gusts between 60 and 75 mph...which is serious...but explainable...I wish someone would figure that out and tell him.
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Not unless he's chained to it!

Fun weather fact:

At Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure...In Suessland there are no straight lines. They got all of the (palm) trees from So FL that were deformed by Andrew.
 
#102
#102
BigPapaVol said:
this is like a game thread - without the shoddy coaching and redneck homer contingent.
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Fire TennTradition!!! He don't know what he's talkin about.

A Tennessee hurricane would be much better than this but we wouldn't get the coverage because the weather channel hates us.

Better?

Edit: GAVol beat me to the weather channel joke.
 
#103
#103
volmanbill said:
Not all that close (relatively speaking) but it was a huge storm. I was in Ft Lauderdale. I had planned on evacuating but by the time I finished securing my business it was too late. Very few times have I feared for my life. That was one night I'll never forget. Watching Brian Norcross on the battery tv telling a woman not to let go of the bathroom door no matter what...the rest of her house was gone.
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So scary....talk about freaking you out...that will do it I'm sure.
 
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#104
#104
notverycrucial said:
What channel are you all watching? 130 mph!! Um, no.
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Fox News man...it's just sad...I actually feel bad that he keeps saying it and no one is correcting him...he thinks he's really getting it..and he's not. It's actually kind of dangerous. The eye-wall will be passing over within ....oh, say, 30 minutes...and then he will see 100+ mph winds possibly....with the surge arriving at the same time...he doesn't need to think that he can be out in that...he needs to get inside very soon.
 
#105
#105
I think Ike got just east enough to save Galveston from the worst...though they'll still take a punch (especially the west side of the island)....but I'm not sure it got east enough to save the inner coast of Galveston Bay...I think the water is pouring into the bay right now...with the surge ensuing. Another jog north is all they need to let the surge relax back out without Bay City taking a huge 25 ft. surge...no jog could mean a monster surge...we'll see....
 
#106
#106
I have to wonder if all the "professionals" on tv aren't giving some of the general public a false sense of security by broadcasting from the middle of it all. I mean, if the female reporter from Ch 2 can stand by the sea wall it must not be that bad, right?
 
#107
#107
TennTradition said:
Fox News man...it's just sad...I actually feel bad that he keeps saying it and no one is correcting him...he thinks he's really getting it..and he's not. It's actually kind of dangerous. The eye-wall will be passing over within ....oh, say, 30 minutes...and then he will see 100+ mph winds possibly....with the surge arriving at the same time...he doesn't need to think that he can be out in that...he needs to get inside very soon.
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I wonder if they'll even see winds that strong onshore. I remember Hurricane Isabel came ashore as a strong Cat2 (maybe 110) but no one onshore was able to get anything documented even near 100 mph... Now I'm very interested to see what type of wind they pick up downtown Houston. I think they're going to see major glass damage to high rises. Hugo blew out tons of windows in downtown Charlotte and it was barely a cat1 when it reached there.
 
#109
#109
notverycrucial said:
I wonder if they'll even see winds that strong onshore. I remember Hurricane Isabel came ashore as a strong Cat2 (maybe 110) but no one onshore was able to get anything documented even near 100 mph... Now I'm very interested to see what type of wind they pick up downtown Houston. I think they're going to see major glass damage to high rises. Hugo blew out tons of windows in downtown Charlotte and it was barely a cat1 when it reached there.
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Yeah...Houston will get hit hard in it's high rises. I think that you're probably right about the wind...it's not uncommon to see winds a fair amount those that were recorded over water due to land friction...
 
#110
#110
The seawall held back the surge on Ike's approach in Galveston...which is great...but we have only seen reporting from its highest points...it isn't going to be pretty on the west end of the island. Now we have to start worrying about the surge in the northern reaches of Galveston Bay and maybe even reverse surge back across Galveston Island once the storm passes over and the winds shift...there's no sea wall back there.....
 
#111
#111
TennTradition said:
Wow...Ike just took a big wobble west...looks like landfall may even be southwest of Galveston...but still close enough that Galveston shouldn't see the eastern eye-wall...but that isn't good for the areas in Galveston Bay...

Current Houston-Galveston Nexrad Radar Map : Weather Underground
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I was just looking at this exact same radar view. It's going to be close. Seems like the eye will be onshore very soon and depending on where the various reporters are, someone should be able to record the calm. That would be cool, since it almost never happens. Usually the eye just collapses or the backend falls apart, but this looks to be different.
 
#112
#112
TennTradition said:
The seawall held back the surge on Ike's approach in Galveston...which is great...but we have only seen reporting from its highest points...it isn't going to be pretty on the west end of the island. Now we have to start worrying about the surge in the northern reaches of Galveston Bay and maybe even reverse surge back across Galveston Island once the storm passes over and the winds shift...there's no sea wall back there.....
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Yeah, the entire island will be submerged, but that wall has done a great job in stopping the frontal impact. the flooding is one thing, but that direct pounding of surge/waves is what flattens everything. you're right, the reverse surge coming out of the bay is another issue entirely.
 
#113
#113
Mike Bettis (TWC) just measured a 98 mph and a 101 mph gust in Houston coming off the bay. Amazing!! I'm shocked they're actually getting gusts that big on the ground.
 
#114
#114
notverycrucial said:
Mike Bettis (TWC) just measured a 98 mph and a 101 mph gust in Houston coming off the bay. Amazing!! I'm shocked they're actually getting gusts that big on the ground.
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Yeah...that was intense...Bettes is taking a pounding....man.

I think that Galveston Bay may miss a lot of the surge, as was predicted on that SLOSH max surge plot I found earlier (I thought that it was wrong at the time...but I was the one who was wrong)....I hope that is how it plays out...but just how bad is Port Arthur going to look in the morning...and western Galveston Island?
 
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#115
#115
Man.....the western side of Galveston Island is just getting nailed by that western eye-wall (and they can certainly get some reverse surge from the intercoastal)...
 
#116
#116
TennTradition said:
Yeah...that was intense...Bettes is taking a pounding....man.

I think that Galveston Bay may miss a lot of the surge, as was predicted on that SLOSH max surge plot I found earlier....I hope that is how it plays out...but just how bad is Port Arthur going to look in the morning...and western Galveston Island?
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I've got to go to bed, but it's been nice to share with a fellow weather geek.. Talk to you later. I hate that I'm missing this, but i have stuff to do early tomorrow.
 
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#117
#117
Yeah...I should really go to bed too...and it really looks like Galveston Bay is going to miss the biggest part of the surge...so I'm beginning to convince myself that I don't have to stay up worried about that. They're still reporting 20+ ft. surges expected in the bay and said they couldn't back off of those numbers...but it has jogged to the north for 45 minutes now....
 
#118
#118
Wow...look at the jog to the north that this storm took just before landfall at Galveston. You talk about an amazing turn of events. This jog pushed the very dangerous eastern eye-wall to the east of Galveston Bay and over less-populated areas east of Houston. Port Arthur still took a huge hit, but it would have anyway...this jog saved many lives on Galveston Island and inside Galveston Bay as well as (IMO) billions of dollars of property damage....

The multi-billion dollar jog north.jpg
 
#119
#119
You'r right, that jog saved the lives of many on Galveston Island considering the fiasco with the mandatory evac being delayed for so long by the mayor. It does look like some of the taller bldgs in downtown Houston did take a real beating. It turns out it may have been a bigger wind event than water event...but that is almost entirely due to the lucky landfall scenario... granted it's still way too early to know for sure.
 
#121
#121
#122
#122
As an aside, I wonder what impact this power outage might have on national polling. We're talking about nearly 2 million people w/out electricity and phones in many cases. Impossible to know for sure but it just crossed my mind. Obviously, it would have zero effect on electoral college projections as Texas is not in play, but it's hard to imagine a major US city (4th largest) suddenly goes dark and that doesn't at least cause a blip in polling.
 
#124
#124
TennTradition said:
That is an interesting point. That is a huge city to lose out on in your polling...
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Now that I think about, it's probably not a good point. Most good pollsters weigh their data by party id so the data should remain pretty stable (Houston Republicans are simply replaced by calls to some other Republicans). The only way a blackout of Houston residents could affect polling is if somehow the views of Houston residents were changed by the disaster itself (possible, i guess).

However, I can see how Ike might still have an impact on the actual voting in November (particularly local races) as may residents have been displaced temporarily and would need to vote absentee if they felt like voting at all.

This is nothing like Katrina, of course, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of (mostly democratic) voters being displaced to states all over the union (most to Texas and Utah). That "migration" probably shifted the political landscape in Louisiana for generations to come.
 
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