Monster In Our Midst Part II

Saturday September 13, 2008

Well hurricane Ike made its way into Galveston, which is about 1.5 hours southwest from where we live. I brought my laptop with me to Grand Prairie, TX where we evacuated and was able to monitor a local weather station using WeatherBug software that’s located at an airport about 1 mile from our home and saw wind gusts upwards of 90 mph. Sustained winds were hovering around 60-70 mph. I received some vague info about our neighborhood, but will not be comfortable until that info is verified. I was told that our homes appeared to be ok, but I left a voice mail on a neighbor’s cell phone that stayed during the storm asking if he would walk around the house to make sure. Other cities around us didn’t fair as well though. Lots of trees and power lines down, also tornadoes that decided to visit. We were under a flood watch due to the storm surge that was expected to be at 20 feet. The elevation of our small town is only 16 feet, so this had us all worried. We later found out that water had not reached us, but did inundate two nearby towns- Bridge City, and Orange Texas. Some areas have six feet of water in homes. Galveston was hit very hard. We’re not sure how much longer we will be here in Grand Prairie. It depends on when the community leaders decide on when it is safe for our return. An interview with our city mayor will be posted soon on a local news website that hopefully will shed some light on the condition of our small town. I’m sure that we will be without power for up to two week, possibly three. Just so our homes are ok…that’s all that matters. I have two generators and 25 gallons of gas stored. We will use a small air conditioner to cool one room of our house at night for sleeping. Once we get home and get settled in I’ll try and post the conditions. I look forward to everything getting back to normal. It may be awhile before I can post any nature-related blog entries so please bear with me.

A Monster in Our Midst

Well folks it looks like us Texans are looking down the barrel of a gun again. We recently dodged a bullet by the name of Gustav and now Ike is a knockin’. In the past we never worried much about hurricanes. It seemed each time one entered the Gulf of Mexico a cool front would come to the rescue from the northwest and push it away from us. This went on for years and we became complacent. Hurricane season was not taken seriously until Rita bit us in 2005. Since then every time the word “hurricane” comes up you get everybody’s attention. We’ve been lucky since then and now we’re facing another monster and once again our behinds are puckering. It will be making landfall sometime this weekend, but even the professionals do not know exactly where. We fully expect to be evacuated before then hoping to return to find our homes still intact. It’s not that I wish this thing on someone else, but I hope once again we dodge another bullet. Hope to be posting good news on our return.