"Inconvienent Ike"

Hurricane Ike - A Category 2 storm with maximun sustained winds at 110 miles per hour. It made landfall directly on Galveston at about 2 am Saturday, Sept. 13th 2008. It is said to have had characteristics of a category 4 storm - raging into the Texas coast warning people hundreds of miles before coming a shore. The storm surge on Galveston began to rise a good 12 hours before the storm made landfall and was as high as 20 feet (in addition to the already high tide). The path of destruction left by Ike and the widespread damage is also that of a category 4 storm.For those of you who are not familiar with hurricanes and their categories, here's the difference between a category 2 and category 4 storm:

Category 2:
- Winds sustained between 96 and 110 mph
- Storm surge expected between 6 and 8 feet.
- Damage: Some roofing material, door, and window damage. Considerable damage to vegetation, mobile homes, etc. Flooding damages piers and small craft in unprotected moorings may break their moorings.



Category 4:
- Winds sustained between 131 and 155 mph
- Storm surge is about 13 and 18 feet.
- Damage: More extensive curtainwall failures with some complete roof structure failure on small residences. Major erosion of beach areas. Terrain may be flooded well inland.

So what did we do??

We had a hurricane party at our house!!!

Here's a picture of us getting ready for the party:

Our friend Grant came over to hang out with us since he's from Iowa (hoo-ha!) and so we pulled our matress out into the living room and after the kids went to sleep in their beds we moved them into the living room with us. You can kinda see Joshie's head in the above picture poking out from the covers. We didn't want them to wake up and be scared, or in the event that something should have happened we wanted to be a family together. Joshie and I slept in the big bed, Jenna slept in the pack n' play (right) and Jason and Grant shared the couch.

We also took lots of preparations in the event that things were worse than expected:

Computer equipment moved into the laundry room:

Bath tubs filled with water:

The storm started to move into our weather area around early evening time and here's a short video sequence of what the weather was like in our backyard at 7:40 pm, 11:41 pm, 1:30 am, and then the damage from the following day:

So my conclusion?? I'll take this over an earthquake any day!! We had over a week's warning and even though we had no electricity for three days, it was a nice vacation from life for our family. Too many times "life" and technology get in the way of spending time together. We "camped" out in the living room with all our windows open for a couple days, barbequed almost every day to make sure that the meat didn't spoil and spent the evening playing games with neighbors via flashlight. Although I was glad to finally have some electricity today as I needed to wash towels and with kids the laundry piles up anyways even with power! Here are some more pictures of the days following Ike's Impact:

Our neighbor's tree looked like it landed on the car, but it was inches away!
That's why we have "flood control"!
Normally this is a small creek off the main road we live off of:

The other side of the street - same little creek:

BBQ hambergers and chicken....
Just don't light the house on fire! The only gas station that has power the day after.
People are waiting over 3 hours for this gas!
First half of the line:

Second half of the line:

Ike

So here's Hurrucane Ike......Its supposed to make landfall sometime in the middle of the night tonight. It's our first real hurricane since we moved here three years ago. Granted we were here for Katrina and Rita, but they didn't come near us. This one is projected to hit Galveston directly.

If you don't know where we live in relation to Galveston, its about 75 miles north - Galveston is on the coast of Texas. Thankfully we are further inland as we didn't have to evacuate and do not have the threat of flooding either. As Texans say, "Run from the water, hide from the wind". Supposedly the wind speed at our house is going to top out at 85 mph (http://houstonhidefromthewind.org/index.php) - No real damage to buildings are supposed to occur, but mobile homes are obviously not going to make it through.

So, what are we doing??? We're "hunkerin" down here at home with a friend of ours and having a little "hurricane party". We've got supplies (water, snacks, dry goods, diapers, etc) if we need it and plenty of flashlights and batteries. I personally think things will be fine and usually i tend to worry in situations like this. Like I've said many times before - "I'd rather have a hurricane than an earthquake any day!!" I'll be sure to fill you in with some video and some pics following the main event.