Ike

[drjeff]

Some real wild, and frankly scary video on this link from CNN of a live camera on the seawall in Galveston. It's apparently going to be broadcasting as long as a) the cell towers still function and b) the camera is still there.

http://www.cnn.com/video/live/live.html?stream=stream4

Considering Ike's center is still roughly 200 miles offshore, this is something to see

 

[Moe Ghoul]

I'm keeping my eyes peeled for another idiot kite boarder.

 

[Greg]

That's crazy. Cool vid.

 

[drjeff]

Just in the hour or so that I've had the webcam up on my desktop, the water has come up appreciably An hour ago there was barely any standing water on the roadway and now there's barely any visible blacktop. That roadway is ontop of the 12 or so foot high Galveston seawall, and the center of Ike is still 15 or so hours offshore!

A couple of hours ago, when the eye passed gust South of a Shell Oil platform, they had SUSTAINED winds at a height of 37 meters above sealevel of 108.8 Knots which is 120ish MPH, and Ike is still getting stronger This folks doesn't look like it's going to be pretty at all for folks in and around Galveston!

 

[drjeff]

This sums it up pretty well. This was posted by Dr. Jeff Masters in his blog over at Weatherunderground.com

"Hurricane Ike is closing in on Texas, and stands poised to become one of the most damaging hurricanes of all time. Despite Ike's rated Category 2 strength, the hurricane is much larger and more powerful than Category 5 Katrina or Category 5 Rita. The storm surge from Ike could rival Katrina's, inundating a 200-mile stretch of coast from Galveston to Cameron, Louisiana with waters over 15 feet high. This massive storm surge is due to the exceptional size of Ike. According to the latest wind field estimate (Figure 1), the diameter of Ike's tropical storm and hurricane force winds are 550 and 240 miles, respectively. For comparison, Katrina numbers at landfall were 440 and 210 miles, respectively. As I discussed in yesterday's blog entry, a good measure of the storm surge potential is Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE). Ike continues to grow larger and has intensified slightly since yesterday, and the hurricane's Integrated Kinetic Energy has increased from 134 to 149 Terajoules. This is 30% higher than Katrina's total energy at landfall. All this extra energy has gone into piling up a vast storm surge that will probably be higher than anything in recorded history along the Texas coast. Storm surge heights of 20-25 feet are possible from Galveston northwards to the Louisiana border. The Texas storm surge record is held by Hurricane Carla of 1961. Carla was a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds at landfall, and drove a 10 foot or higher storm surge to a 180-mile stretch of Texas coast. A maximum storm surge of 22 feet was recorded at Port Lavaca, Texas."


The other thing that I noticed a little while ago, is we had the weather channel on at the office, and as usual they had Jim Cantorre(?sp) positioned right in the path of Ike in Galveston. In his live report, you could almost sense fear in his voice/reporting today, almost with the realization that places pretty close to where he was standing may very well not be there 24 hours from now

 

[Johnskiismore]

Wow, I wouldn't want to be there!

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

I'm going to tune into to see what's up with Ike..I'll most likely be up alot of the night watching the coverage..this is historic..most likely worse than Katrina..and most likely several thousand people who stuck around will die!!!