Ike: Wednesday Night

It's Wednesday night and we are definitely watching Ike. My favorite sites are SciGuy's blog and Storm Pulse (image above). In the image, we are the small green dot, that's about the location of The Woodlands. This map has the storm hitting land as a category 4 and being a category 3 over most of Houston.

I made a trip to Walmart and got the essentials. Water, Gatorade, Chef-boy-ardee, canned soup, bacon and sausage (in the freezer for now), batteries and a couple of books. It was not a mad house but definitely crowded for 9pm on a Wednesday.

In 2005, we went through Rita, which ended up coming in so far to the East of Houston that we didn't see too much damage. I slept through the whole thing actually. Probably 3 trees fell on our street and there were signs of more downed trees in The Woodlands. I fear this will be much worse and it makes me nervous.

Ryan will be busy the next two days making sure his jobs sites are secure and all potential projectile building material is removed. I will have to make the decision on going to work tomorrow. I fear getting stuck in evacuation traffic if I go in, but I don't want to appear to be a slacker either! I'll have to watch the storm projections to guage the panic level of those on the coast.

Friday night, we will probably "hunker down" in our living room with the dog unless things start getting bad, when we will move to the hall or bathroom. It will be Admiral's first hurricane.

Keep the Texas Coast in your thoughts. Right now, it looks like Ike could be a big one.

Update 10pm

As soon as I posted the original post, the 10pm model updates were posted. Ike's projected path has shifted a great deal to the North/East. This puts it much closer to Houston. The Woodlands is again the green dot north of Houston.

The projected landfall intensity is now only a Category 3 but if it made landfall on this path, it looks like we would get those Category 3 winds as far north as The Woodlands.

I am no expert, will be looking forward to SciGuy's explanation in the morning.