Since people continue to google in, wondering what to expect in and around Katy, here’s my best take on our situation:
The 1pm advisories are out, and very little has changed. Hurricane Ike is almost certainly going to hit as a Cat 2 storm. Ike is pushing an incredibly dangerous surge, and people from Galveston Island and east, who are along the coast, are in dire danger. I’m scared to death for them.
Things will look much, much different here, though.
We’re not going get any sleep, because it’s gonna howl blue blazes most of the night. Things are going to go bang, and transformers are gonna go pop (though we may not hear it over the sound of the wind). I expect to lose power, and I’m anticipating damage to our trees.
We’ll probably start out trying to sleep in our own rooms. Since the sustained winds in my zip code (77450) are projected to be around 80 mph at the height of the storm, and likely even lower, I expect that the entire household (including the friend who’ll be staying over w/ AC) will end up downstairs on air mattresses before the night’s finished.
Everybody around us has pulled everything indoors, so I don’t anticipate any broken windows (though they’ll probably rattle and moan alarmingly). I’ve removed expensive electronics that are near them just in case, and we’ll close all the blinds. We’re in a solidly built, newer home, so I don’t expect major damage to the house, though a gutter down wouldn’t surprise me.
We’ll all be very, very tired by tomorrow evening when the clean-up begins. And we’ll be fine.
There are some situations that call for evacuations: trailer homes, for instance, or medical conditions that require continuous electricity. But as Eric Berger said in the Q&A I posted earlier this week, Katy’s positioned to withstand a hurricane better than almost anywhere in the wider Houston metro area.
People run TO here.
Right about now, I recommend a nap. And maybe some cherry pie. I’m thinking about both, and not necessarily in that order.
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