Running Hurricane Ike thread

Nice... is that anywhere near alabama's Black Belt?

 

One anchor just said "a helicopter encountered winds of 80 knots . . . that's 130 mph."

No, it's 92 mph. But thanks for making another million people wet their pants.

 

not trying to be flippant at all when i ask why are you still there?
and best of luck.

 

We are still here because we are 80-90 miles north of Galveston.

Plus, I have a warehouse on my property that is built to withstand 150 mph winds.

And with the stupid people who chose to stay on Galveston Island, there was nothing flippant about your question at all.

 

Gotcha. And it's largely a true statement.

 

There were tornado warnings from some of the outer bands as far north as south Mississippi today. One of our football teams was playing down there and it got canceled. Seeing as I was supposed to cover it, can't say as I'm disappointed.
And one gas station around here -- ironically, it's usually the discount station -- jacked its price up to $5.17 a gallon. News reports said about four people have bought gas there all day. The stations across the street are still in the $3.60 range. Hopefully, there's some sort of visit from state authorities next week.

 

Models seem to project a wobble west, which dovetails with my earlier opinion that Ike is simply too big to turn on a dime. That's not good for Galveston.

ADD: If Ike takes the western swing as I suspect it may, the eye would pass closer to DFW and we'll get a turd-floater like we haven't seen for decades. But if it stays more east (Athens/Canton/Sulphur Springs), it may be like Rita and we'd get a lot of wind but not a drop of rain.

 

HOUSTON (AP) — Authorities say tens of thousands have ignored evacuation orders and are staying behind as Hurricane Ike takes aim at the Texas coast.
An Associated Press survey shows that in three counties alone, some 90,000 people have chosen not to leave despite dire warnings from forecasters.
The emergency management coordinator for Galveston County estimates that 80 percent of the residents evacuated. That leaves more than 11,000 residents in the county that is expected to take a direct hit from Ike's massive storm surge.
Farther up the coast, officials say half the residents of Beaumont stayed put less than two weeks after many evacuated for Hurricane Gustav, only to see the storm miss the city entirely.
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We're getting in random photos, and with the stuff on th AP wire, there's talk in my newsroom that Galveston is dead. The oldest paper in Texas may have printed its last edition

 

I asked this a couple days ago, but I'll ask it again ... if 40 percent of the people are still there, what's the point of a mandatory evacuation?

 

More than anything else, it's there to protect the officials. They tell you to evac and you get stranded, they basically can leave you for dead and it puts some liability off them.
And technically, you can be arrested and/or finied if you don't leave. Just doesn't happen though.

 

Washes the government's hands of any responsibility if they can't get the responders through Mother Nature's war zone to help them out.

Like back in grade school and someone would fart and all the boys in class would shove their thumb to their foreheads as a way of saying "Not it."

Well, the guhvment's got a thumb to its forehead right now.

 

Either 11,000 are going to die, or the term "certain death" in forecasts is going to die.

Sure as hell hope it's the latter.