I think this is an alarmist forecast and not very accurate:
the hurricane needs some basic conditions in order to develop the way it is depicted here, conditions which are very unlikely to happen.
Hurricanes are a weather phenomenon heavyly related to the ocean:
they take their energies most exclusively from the oceans surfaces, the heat of the waters basically.
As soon as they enter continental soil, they loose rapidly energy and vanish into a heavy rainfall.
I do not remember any hurricane devastating The Great Lakes, for example.
It seems to me the National Weather Service has no BOINC to find out accurate weather predictions/forecasts, I am affraid.
What do you think?
Ike: do not mess with Texas!

Actually Dirk, if you check the little black dots along the path, they are showing the decreasing intensity of the storm just like you indicate. Yes, the storm system will probably follow this path, but the intensity will be so far decreased that it'll just be a lot of rain and a little wind by the time it gets that far north. But it will still be the remnants of a major storm system that they'll still be able to track.

So where is JD? he should have given us a new sign by now....... :p
Its 12 hours since his last update ;-)


ok then...im on to look up the news.. I hope its all better than expected... ;-)

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So where is JD? he should have given us a new sign by now....... :p
Its 12 hours since his last update ;-)


ok then...im on to look up the news.. I hope its all better than expected... ;-)

A little better, but not great. Storm surge was 10 to 12 feen (3 to 4 meters) instead of 20 feet (6.5 meters). It never quite made category 3.

Still there was at least 7 feet of water plus waves in downtown Galveston.

Rescue crews could not work because of dangerous conditions (I expect that they are just starting up again about now).

[edit]

Power is out to aobut 4 million people, so I would not expect to hear from anyone in the area for a while.

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BOINC WIKI

Yes, i have read updated news now, and see what you just said John. Here is some of it;

"Houston was dark Saturday morning except for downtown and the Texas Medical Center, which are fed by underground power sources, Floyd LeBlanc of CenterPoint Energy said in an e-mail. Nearly all 2 million customers, or 4.5 million people, in the Houston-Galveston area were without power, he said.

Ike was expected to remain a hurricane through Saturday afternoon and could dump up to 10 inches (25 cm) of rain over eastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana.

"Even though Ike has made landfall, it remains a very large and dangerous hurricane with effects felt at long distances from the center," the hurricane center said."

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Ike is still a category 1 hurricane and has almost reached the same latitude as Dallas, but should go east of Dallas.

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Calm Chaos Forum...Join Calm Chaos Now

But it will still be the remnants of a major storm system that they'll still be able to track.

They can track the remnants all the way over to the UK too. Ike will hit us in a week or so as another sustained period of torrential rain. As soon as your tropical air masses hit the cold air around the UK the heavens open!

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But it will still be the remnants of a major storm system that they'll still be able to track.

They can track the remnants all the way over to the UK too. Ike will hit us in a week or so as another sustained period of torrential rain. As soon as your tropical air masses hit the cold air around the UK the heavens open!

Unfortunately, we could use some of the rain here, and it looks like it is going to go too far to the north to do any good.

The good news is that the crews are out, and power is starting to be restored to some areas.

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BOINC WIKI

So where is JD? he should have given us a new sign by now....... :p
Its 12 hours since his last update ;-)


ok then...im on to look up the news.. I hope its all better than expected... ;-)

Here I am... electricity went out at midnight local time and just came back on, after 18 hours. Had a walk about the neighborhood... a few of trees and fences down. I'got a leaky roof after losing a few shingles.

Cell phone seemed to work most of the time, no loss of water pressure here in Sugar Land.

You all probably know more over all story since I've been in the dark without any TV news the past 18 hours.

Cheers,
JDWhale

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So where is JD? he should have given us a new sign by now....... :p
Its 12 hours since his last update ;-)


ok then...im on to look up the news.. I hope its all better than expected... ;-)

Here I am... electricity went out at midnight local time and just came back on, after 18 hours. Had a walk about the neighborhood... a few of trees and fences down. I'got a leaky roof after losing a few shingles.

Cell phone seemed to work most of the time, no loss of water pressure here in Sugar Land.

You all probably know more over all story since I've been in the dark without any TV news the past 18 hours.

Cheers,
JDWhale

;-) welcome back.

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So where is JD? he should have given us a new sign by now....... :p
Its 12 hours since his last update ;-)


ok then...im on to look up the news.. I hope its all better than expected... ;-)

Here I am... electricity went out at midnight local time and just came back on, after 18 hours. Had a walk about the neighborhood... a few of trees and fences down. I'got a leaky roof after losing a few shingles.

Cell phone seemed to work most of the time, no loss of water pressure here in Sugar Land.

You all probably know more over all story since I've been in the dark without any TV news the past 18 hours.

Cheers,
JDWhale

Glad to see you made it through. Now if we could hear from the other crunchers that were in the way...

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BOINC WIKI

Glad you are back with us JD......and that the damage you sustained was minimal....
Many to your southeast were not so fortunate.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Here's Weather Underground link to a station the center of IKE passed over.
Note the minimum Barometric Pressure and calm winds at 3:43AM, 13Sep and the 180 degree shift in wind direction.

This station is not too far from Geek@Play home.

Geek@Play : I wish you the best.

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I have been wondering about if there is any difference between whats called Tropical storms and hurricanes, and what we call storms and hurricanes here in Norway and other European countries. After searching a bit around i have found some answers.

Both categories use the same scale for wind power.. so in that way its just the same.

In Norway its more common with the rough weather like smaller storms, but the big hurricanes happens normally more often in tropical areas, because its the warmer ocean temperatures that mainly gives them strenght. Also from there the name Tropical storms/hurricanes.

The Tropical ones also mostly contains more rain than those we have here. And we got often the heaviest rain after tropical storms in American areas.
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I am used to storms, as I said, thats pretty common in this area. But hurricanes over category 1 is much more seldom. I have experienced some bigger hurricanes. The 1.th of January in both 1991 and 1992 we had hurricanes (called the New-year-hurricanes)The one in 1992 would have been a category 3 hurricane, but we dont use those categories. Its just about mph and knots. Well.. Both these two hurricanes was bad..but there were no reason for us to leave anywhere.. noone told us to either.. And we were still here the next day. Lucky us. ;-)

earler and later hurricanes i remember,i have not found any category nr for.. but its not important really, since obviously we survived, and its in the past. ;-)

Hopefully Ike has not caused human loss.. and that it can be a break form those heaviest hurricanes for a while..

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The last report I heard was that one woman was killed when a tree fell on her house.

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What you do today you will have to live with tonight

The last report I heard was that one woman was killed when a tree fell on her house.

+ two drownings that I heard about.

Fortunately, the tidal surge was only 13 feet, and not 20+ that was feared. There was already 7 feed of water in Galveston, if 7 more feet had been added to that the destruction would have been much worse. There ware also thousands of people that did not evacuate ahead of the storm so the loss of life would have been much higher.

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BOINC WIKI

That is for sure. I am glad that things weren't any worse.

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What you do today you will have to live with tonight

A cyclone is a unique type of storm. Having lived on the Texas Gulf coast for more than 30 years I have become somewhat experienced with the characteristics of these horrific storms in my area.

The difference of being located 35 miles either side of the center path of the eye of the storm is like the difference between night and day. I live 35 miles southwest of the closest approach of Hurricane IKE' center and am located on the 'clean' side of the storm, we are only having minor inconveniences.

Folks located nearer the center and up to 100 miles to the northeast of the path are suffering very much, still being without running water, no electricity and roads that are not passable. Some services are expected to take 2-6 weeks to restore... The surviving residents of Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula have been asked to leave their residences and not to return until infractructure can be restored... maybe upto 2 months from now.

My heart goes out to the residents that live just 50 miles east and northeast from me... I wish all of them the best.

National news is still unavailable over broadcast media, we have enough local news to keep all network broadcasts busy... 24 hours/day!

Local news right now is reporting that electricity has been restored to 550,000 customers, yet 1.5 million customers are still without electricity.

Those of us that live outside the most devastated areas have been requested to stay home and share our resources with our nearby neighbors that are less fortunate than ourselves.

Lots of BarBQs in the neighborhoods with folks meeting some neighbors for the first time.

Best Regards to all,
JDWhale

Postscript : I understand Matt Lauer from NBC 'Today Show' was in the Houston area this morning... Unfortunately those of us in Houston did not get to see the show because it was pre-empted by local news :-( I really would to like to see what news is getting out of our area to the rest of the country.

This just in... : Local news reports... Hundreds and hundreds of ultility velicles (electricity and tree choppers) are making way to dispatch area (horse race track in northwest Houston). These vehicles are from 25 states and Canada. Thanks for the help folks !!!

Also a family rescue of 6 people feared dead on Bolivar Peninsula. Praise God!

My thoughts and prayers go out to those who were less fortunate the you. Again I am glad that you missed the brunt of IKE.

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What you do today you will have to live with tonight

Sad story on the news today... a woman had just purchased a gasoline powered generator.. still in the back of her pickup truck... waited in line 4 hours to buy gasoline and the station ran out of gas as she neared the pumps.
She has the geny... but she ain't got gas.

On the upside... a cool front passed through the area 2 days ago... overnight temps are dropping below 70F... about 10 degrees lower than normal this time of year. Daily high temps are running low to mid 80s... about 8-10 degrees lower than normal.

I got out today and drove a bit larger loop... still a lot of folks without electricity. Gas stations that have electricity the lines are getting shorter, but the gas stations without electricity can not pump gas. Those stations with gas are selling regular 2 week quantity within 12 hours.

Here's a link to KPRC Houston NBC-TV affiliate with some interesting information & videos... check out our senior weatherman, Frank Billingsley' Walking Tour of Historic Galveston. He has a home in Galveston that was flooded with 3 ft of water.

Best wishes for all,
JDWhale

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Just received this reply from Geek@Play to PM I sent 3 days ago....

Geek@Play wrote:

JDWhale wrote:

We're not getting any national news here in Houston, but I realize the center of the eye passed over Eagle Point and I realize this is very close to [your home]. I wish you the best when you can come back home.

Best regards,
John

Please post this for me. We stayed in Waco for 2 days then came home. Currently using Sony PSP to write this. My home has minor damage. Yard is a mess with trees down. No power. Life goes on at a slower pace.

Best wishes.

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