Expecting a visitor this weekend.

thanks for the heads up..They decided to head back? sheeeee. I hope that the storm doesn't change paths again.

Thanks for the heads up. Get home safe Goose.

We're back. The storm is still off shore, big swirls of clouds giving it away. It's pretty windy out, 25-30 mph, higher in gusts. Supposed to get up to near hurricane strength. It's going in north of Galveston, can see it on the radar loops now. It's such a HUGE storm is why we're getting anything out of it.

Not many people in town. One restaurant in town, The Green Iquana, was the only thing open. Guy's making a killing. There's a dusk to dawn curfew. I feel better being back to secure the place myself. I have the generator ready just in case. In Claudette, I think the power went down when we were still in tropical storm strength, about 60 mph winds, so I might need it before it's all over. Looks like Beaumont/Port Aurthor is going to catch hell. I have friends there, too. Hoping the best for 'em.

Thanks to AFNurse and family for their tremendous hospitality. We were wanderers for a while there. They made it a good time! And, nice bike!

Just lookin' outside, the tree limbs are whipping it up right now. Ought to shoot a few pix of "hurricane palms" across the street, LOL.

good luck and be careful.

Put a helmet on when you go out to shoot pics!

Just wondering how You Texas folks weathered the storm. It looks as though the worst is over now according to the news. Everyone OK? Any major losses?

It all went way north of us. All the bad stuff was east of Houston and the most destruction was from Beaumont/Port Arthur into coastal Louisiana. We didn't get much more than a good breeze. So, we're all hunky dory down here. Beaumont/Port Arthur ain't too well off, though. I have a friend in Beaumont I haven't heard from, probably can't phone out or e-mail. To my knowledge, no one in Texas was hurt, though. I'm sure he got out.

Well that's a bit of good news after what happened in NO. I thought for sure this one was going to be even worse with the exception of the levees of course. Rita was one big fat broad looking at it on the radar! No offense to any big fat broads actually named Rita out there.

Yep

To add to that,,, If they would build with brick and not wood most or all the structures would still be there.

Just like the big bad wolf and the three little pigs..Katrina and Rita just huff & puff and blow the houses down.

Why do they build right on the coast? Many folk's satiable desire to have beachfront property or the beauty of the oceanview..and..because they can. I've started looking into similar property on the Oregon Coast, but they don't quite get the storms that the Gulf and Atlantic coasts get (water's too cold in the Pacific). Rains a lot, but that's the nature of the beast I guess.

Funny about the brick, but brick is not strong at all. Many of the older houses after Carla were still standing while the brick structures were flattened. Cinder block re-bar reinforced buildings are strong enough to stand, but they won't have a roof nor much left worth saving inside. The velocity of the wind blowing over a roof creates low pressure compared to the air inside the structure, Bernoulli's principle, the way an airplane flies. High winds actually suck the roof off rather than blow it off. With the roof gone, the rest loses structural integrity and brick catches the wind well. The older homes breath better and lots of times roof will stay intact, structurally anyway.

The only really windproof structure is steel beam construction. Some homes down here are going up with steel, the latest craze, rather than with traditional 2x4 framework. Might blow the shingles off, but the framework stays and walls retain their strength. The roofing joists and construction is steel bolted to steel. Even that is toast if you're in the tidal surge zone, though.

Building in low lying areas is just plain stupidity IMHO. Major hurricanes have been quite infrequent the last 30 years. We've been on a down cycle. Now, we're on the up cycle. People have short memories, want to move close to the water. There's lots of immigrant Texans down here, too, and others that weren't around to witness our last cat 4, Carla in 1961. If you went through Carla and I did, you will NEVER forget the lesson!

We've dodged a few bullets, Allen in '80, Gilbert in '88. We've had small storms like Alicia in '83 and Claudette in '02. There was a storm in about '97 called Bret that was a cat five, small in area, that went in below corpus. The total destruction area of that storm was maybe 20 miles wide, went into the Kennedy and King ranches where no one lives. People get complacent after such storms don't hurt anything. Bret was about the size and power of Andrew. Think of what it would have done if it'd hit 50 miles up the coast and dead on Corpus Christi! The only reason Andrew did such damage was it just happened to hit a highly populated area. Florida doesn't have much coastline that isn't populated, not like Texas does.

A lot of the beach homes like on West Galveston island are rich ba$tards that could give a poop if their million dollar beach house blows away. They'll just rebuild it and finance it with some minor stock sale. Who needs insurance when you're a billionaire? Anyone NOT rich would be STUPID to build there. Alicia washed away the beach and a few rows of homes in Jamaica beach, west Galveston, were claimed by the state cause the law reads any land in between the water and the dunes is public. Suddenly, that property was between the dunes and beach. There was a lot of crying over that, but hey, if you got more money than brains, sorry! Let the buyer beware. That property there probably goes for a quarter million an acre, too.

When I bought here in Port Lavaca, I was insistent on high ground. This house was fresh built, on a 22 foot bluff even though I can see the bay from here. We're 26 miles from the gulf, upper end of the bay. So, it's pretty surge proof. Carla hit Port Lavaca head on and didn't get water to this house with a 20+ foot surge at Port O'Conner. It flattened Port O'Conner and Olivia, nothing left down there. There was a nice water front home in Olivia with the use of a fishing pier and boat ramp right out the door when I bought here. They wanted 35k for the place (1982 prices). I liked it a lot, but knew the history down here. It was on a bluff, but only 10 feet off the water. So, I passed on that one. I'm sure they sold it rather quickly cause it was a nice little home. But, time dulls memory and folks don't think about storms when they buy until one comes.

It's sort of the same reason you get bone heads saying they're going to stay and "ride it out". You get a Carla in here and most folks better own a friggin' surf board if they're going to "ride it out" cause they're going to be riding the surf for a ways. In such cases, Darwin rules.

Ain't that the truth. I wonder how many insurance companies are going to fully Hurricane insure newly built homes in these devastated areas?

You did the right thing thinking about the future in where you bought your house. While not in a flooding area, before I bought my last home I was able to check out the lot during a huge downpour of a storm before buying it. It drained real well..so I bought it. A lot of people don't think about that before buying. I think buying in the Winter or during storm season is a good way to check out the possible worst scenarios.