We are riding the storm out. We are located about 60 miles NW of Galveston, so our biggest concern is wind. Our area does not flood. The addage is: "Run from water, hide from wind". We will manage the wind aspect, and keep the highways free for those who need to evacuate. Our biggest concern: power outage. The suburbs are low priority for the power company, and we understand the process. So, now a little of our experience...
We had our own hurricane party, just Pam and me (and the dogs, of course). Pam made a chocolate cake, and we watched 3 episodes of House. Now we are making final preparations, and will make notes here as long as we are able...2056h 20080912
Officially, Ike made landfall at 20080913:0210 just east of Galveston as a Category 2 hurricane (winds over 100 mph, see the hurricane scale and the wind scale). We felt the winds hit hard at 0230h, as the rain came and the wind reached howling levels. Our house did not creak nor flinch, and we lost no windows. At 0330h, we lost power for a minute or two, but it did recover. We had a hard loss of power at 0430h, and wind intensity, as well as rain, was high.
We got up with our dogs about 0500. Dogs need to go out and take care of business regardless of the weather. We noted our trees were fully in motion, but still rooted, and the rain was coming down hard. We estimated the windspeed at 40-50 mph (64-80 kph). We have natural gas for our stove, and as one who prefers to use a french press for coffee, boiled some water and had a very civilized cup of joe. The power flickered on and off between 0600-0620, and then went down for good. Water pressure was dropping all this time as well. We had a little battery operated TV, the first official Jeep accessory I received, as a gift from my in-laws. We followed the news and weather maps for a couple of hours.
The wind continued to be strong until about 0800, when the howling could only be heard in some gusts. Pam and I napped until about 1000h. It was still raining, and the winds had died considerably, to about 20 mph (32 kph). Looking outside, we could see small branches everywhere, and lost a couple of large branches in the pine tree on the front lawn. A neighbor across the street had a tree snap in half, and one down the street had a tree uproot altogether, all these discoveries in an informal neighborhood damage walk and sharing of the adventures of the night.
We were surprised by our daughter and her family arriving at our house. They had roof damage that was leaking into the house, and decided to make a run for drier confines. By noon, parents deemed it OK for the kids to be outside playing, and laughter was heard on our street. We still had no electricity, but water pressure had returned and we were doing well.
We cooked a pot of pasta and used spaghetti sauce from the previous week to prepare ourselves an Italian feast, complete with a spinach salad. For dessert, we tapped the chocolate cake from the night before. As it got warmer outside, it got warmer inside. We had opened some windows to get some cross flow, but oddly enough, there was little wind by now. We all knew it could be sooner or much later before power (and A/C) were restored, but we were grateful because we know our coastal Texas brethren had lost much more. At 1554h today, power was restored.
We had experienced severe storm conditions for almost 6 hours, and had been almost 12 hours without electricity. We experienced sustained winds of 45+ mph (60+ kph), and gusts up to 65 mph (104 kph). We lost our NW fence. We do not how much rain fell in our area (note: estimates are 6 inches). So far as we know at this writing, Ike took three lives, nearly miraculous considering the size and power of this storm. Ike is gone, picking up after him remains...
20080913:1630
