Day: September 12, 2008

To all who are checking this site out for Hurricane Ike info, I’ll be live-blogging the storm. My wife and I live in The Heights neighborhood of Houston (map here). That’s quite a distance from Galveston and the coast, but right in the path of this monster. I plan to blog until I lose power or need sleep.

Friday 5:31 PM: First live-blog post. It is definitely getting very windy on our street; trees are whipping around nicely and the chimney is starting to whistle at us. No rainfall, yet. Estimate winds at 10-15 mph with 30 mph gusts.

Friday 5:39 PM: My friend Phil is also going to be blogging about the hurricane here.

Friday 6:10 PM: First power outage (for a few seconds) at 6:01, about 8 hours before landfall. This brought to mind two things: our router wasn’t on a surge protector yet (remedied), and I’m not sure where our power lines run; it dawns on me they may be the lines nearby that run through lots of branches, in which case this little experiment in live blogging will be little, indeed.

Friday 6:16 PM: First signs of wind damage; a few huge limbs broke off of a tall (~45 feet) tree at the end of our driveway, taking out part of a fence and falling at least partly in a neighbor’s garage. I think it dinged his SUV (the door was open for some reason).

Friday 6:33 PM: This is what neighbors are for! A bunch of people (myself included) went out and removed debris from the common driveway, so no logs become window-smashing projectiles, at least not on our windows… Sarah and I haven’t even met all of our neighbors, yet, but these seem really nice: good folk, just waiting out a storm. (Oh, and their SUV is fine. Don’t think the fence is gonna last the night, though…)

Friday 6:46 PM: Two more mini-power outages. This is either going to get cut off abruptly by the power going for good or it’s going to get long quickly. So, if you want to keep reading, click the link below.

Continue reading “Hurricane Ike Live Blog”

I have work to do, but serious connectivity issues mean it’s time to stop. So, just waiting now. Nothing much going on outside, yet – it was breezy (like 10-15 mph gusts) a while ago, when I retrieved a small pot from the back patio before it could reenter the house on its own.

Right now, just enjoying the power and A/C while we have it.

Well, all our preparations are complete. Our windows are taped – boarding them was not a realistic possibility, as the exposed windows are all both very large and very high above ground level – and there’s plenty of water (bathtubs and bottled) and food. Work due today is all completed, too, so it’s down to a few random tasks like laundry and waiting it out.

Many people in Houston, as you might expect, are completely out of their minds right now. Most are fairly together, but it only takes a few people talking to themselves and (literally) throwing things around a grocery store or crashing shopping carts into parked cars to make everything seem chaotic and unhinged. Fortunately, we don’t have any more running around to do, so we can avoid the insanity now.

I will start live-blogging whenever things start to get interesting (i.e., at least noticeable wind or rain in this part of town). Expect that to be around 5 or 6, give or take.