Rock You Like a Hurricane

So here it is, 8 days after Hurricane Ike hit our area. I have to admit I was not expecting much, as living in this part of Texas for over 16 years has not brought much in the hurricane department. Here's what happened...

On Friday, school was cancelled and everyone spent the day getting ready. For us that meant bringing in lawn furniture, cleaaring out a space in the garage for my car, and making sure we had "provisions" in the pantry (chips and salsa, oreos, cereal... sure, we were prepared). We watched the waters rising in Galveston and on Bolivar ahead of the storm on the news, and thought that at most we'd see a lot of rain. Then we waited... and waited... and waited...

Friday night we "slept" downstairs in the living room so we could keep the news on. We didn't actually sleep much -- the wind was literally howling, and it was knocking down branches and trees, so we were hearing unfamiliar noises. The eye of the storm passed our area around 5 AM, and the power was knocked out about an hour later.

Saturday we expected a lot of rain, and we weren't disappointed -- rainfall totals for our area were between 10 and 15 inches. The rain slowed by the afternoon, so we drove to check on our parents. We had to turn around a few times due to high water before finding a road that was passable (most had either water or entire trees across the roadway). Our families were lucky -- none of us had major damage from falling debris, just a lot of mess to clean up.

What we did not expect with Hurricane Ike were the days without power. Ours went out on Saturday morning and didn't come back on until Thursday. Thankfully, God sent us some unseasonably cool weather, so it wasn't a typical miserable Texas September while everyone was trying to recover!

Now things are slowly but surely returning to normal, and most jobs and schools are resuming this week. I think this was a major lesson to all of us in the area about tropical activity -- the dangers are very real and we all need to be prepared when a hurricane starts churning in the Gulf.

I'll try to post some storm pictures soon. Until then, here's a video of damage to the Woodlands Mall and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavillion (a top concert destination in Houston):

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=4226712&cl=9745510&src=news