I think “pain in the patootie” was my grandmother’s phrase, but wherever I heard it, that’s the polite version of my thinking.
We’ve got the usual uncertainties: 25 counties under a declared State of Emergency, several hundred miles of variation on possible landfall, “should I stay or should I go?” speculation for hundreds of thousands of people, and entirely too many possibilities. This really is unfortunate, because 3 days is when one might reasonably expect to start evacuating a target area (and they have, in fact, started some evacuations), but there’s still just so much room for error:
The natural question to ask is, can we have confidence in the hurricane center’s forecast near Port Lavaca?
There are several ways to answer that question. Foremost, we can look at the average error for three-day forecasts, and find that it’s about 160 miles. Galveston is only about 130 miles from Port Lavaca.
Since the intensity projections for Ike right now also still vary widely, there’s plenty of reason for people to be extremely alert.
Fear, however, is not at all helpful (I really need a hurricane season web banner that says “Remember Rita!!”). Since fear is often (though not always) spawned by ignorance, here are a couple of helpful links I’ve come across in the last few days.
I loved this link to historical Houston area wind speeds, by zipcode (hover over your zip for data): hidefromthewind.org (NOTE: this link now shows projected sustained wind speeds for Ike by zipcode)
Added: The National Weather Service has a very cool interactive graphic tool. Hover over the wind speed links and the projections (and wind direction) will display. Please note that the hidefromthewind link above shows higher projections, and so I’m mentally splitting the difference for Katy.
Since the worst winds my zipcode has ever had is 94 mph, I’m absolutely confident that my home will still be standing here (with all of us in it)… even if Ike takes the worst possible track in (which in this case would appear to be between Freeport and Port O’Connor).
Since lots of people have been googling in about how to board windows, here’s a direct link to the Lowe’s How-To page.
Finally — stormpulse.org has a very cool graphic-based interactive site. It doesn’t present the major hurricane models I’m used to seeing, but the intensities and paths provide interesting info.
And for any of my Katy neighbors who are still worrying whether they need to jump out on the highways and run, here’s a link to my prior post specific to our area.
Here’s hoping this all becomes at least a bit clearer than mud by tonight, eh?