We first mentioned Hurricane Ike on 1st September when it was so far off no-one knew what would happen. At that time everyone was focused on Hurricane Gustav.
Well Gustav is long gone and Ike is now in the Gulf of Mexico. Actually it pretty much fills the Gulf of Mexico, as you can see below:
Yesterday the path was predicted to be as shown here:
So the eye of the storm to the west of Houston.
This morning, the forecast path has changed:
Now the eye of the storm is to the east of Houston and its still changing. However, because of its size it means there will be some impact here (such as 12 inches of rain), even 80 miles from the coast.
Ike’s eye is expected in or around Galveston early tomorrow (Saturday) morning. The effects are already being felt there.
Galveston is the location of the deadliest natural disaster in US history. A storm in September 1900 claimed between 8,000 and 12,000 lives. This event happened long before engineer Herbert Saffir and his metrologist friend Bob Simpson defined the Saffir-Simpson scale to categorise the strength of storms (Category 1 to 5 with 5 as the strongest with winds of greater than 155mph). Had the scale been in existence then it would have cateorised the 1900 storm as Category 4 (winds greater than 131mph).
A monument to those who died is on the sea front, right in front of the sea wall:
This sea wall is 17ft high and was built after the 1900 storm. Since then waves have caused damage to parts of the road on the other side of the wall but storm surge (where the sea level rises because of a storm) has never gone higher. Unfortunately, even now (12 or so hours before landfall) the storm is giving it a hard time. The pier is about to disappear underwater so who knows what it will be like in a few hours.
There has been a mandatory evacuation for Galveston and other parts of the Texas Gulf coast for the past day or so. This has affected around 1 million people so far.
This seems to be mostly complete now, given that the traffic on the interstate here was jammed all day and now its clear.
Schools and businesses are closed today to ensure evacuation routes are kept clear just in case more evacuations are required. So not a good time to try and move into a new house (or try and arrange gas and electricity supply, get your children’s inoculations or any number of other things you might have been expecting to do).
In other news a 584ft freighter is stranded 90 miles off the coast of Galveston. Our container is due any day in Houston docks. I wonder if this is it?
And the title of today’s entry? Its from “Riders on the storm” by The Doors. Here are the other storm related entries in my iTunes list:
-The Storm - Blackmore’s Night
-After the Storm - Crosby Stills and Nash
-Mind Storm - Joe Satriani
-Before the Storm - Queensryche
-Ridin’ the Storm Out - REO Speedwagon
-Embrace the Storm - Stream of Passion
-Hurricane - Y&T
I didn’t have anything by Ike (Turner) either solo or with Tina.