It is now 12:30 AM and it is not even raining here!
Our good friend, Deana Flak, called earlier this afternoon to say that the tracking system her husband's business uses was showing Ike coming in at Galveston and going up through Houston. That would put us on the "good" side, or the "clean" side of the storm, with less water and wind damage.
We have followed Hurricane Ike on The Weather Channel and local Houston news throughout the day. As the afternoon wore on, we were still scurrying around the farm collecting anything that could turn into a missile in hurricane winds, boarding up a few more windows, securing all the animals' housing units one last time. I kept expecting our work to be halted by heavy rains running ahead of the storm.
But those rains never came.
Ike is a fearsome storm. As early as 2:00 PM this afternoon, the coastal village of Surfside was completely under water. By 6:00 PM, the water was 12-15 feet above normal levels, and covering the stilts beach houses are built on and lapping at the front doors of many homes.
We saw a newscaster reporting from the Galveston seawall, where the water level was near the top of the seawall (it is normally a long drop down to the beach -- at least 10 feet, possibly more) and waves were crashing into the cement seawall, spraying high into the air!
Some 300,000 people are without power, throughout metropolitan Houston. But not here. Our generator sits at the ready outside our house, but we are still operating on Centerpoint Electricity.
We have a brisk wind outside that has picked up a little bit in the last hour, but nothing with any destructive force.
It seems to me that if we were going to be included in the damage from Ike, we would have felt something by now. Many communities to the north and east of us have.
They are predicting the eye will make landfall around 2:00 AM, our time. We are thinking that if we still have no ill effects by then, we have dodged the bullet!
I will make the final Ike Report tomorrow!
Jay Hellerich, executive director
smiling dog farms
a 501(c)3 corporation
wharton, texas
979-257-3377
www.smilingdogfarms.org
http://smilingdogfarms.blogspot.com
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smiling dog farms
a 501(c)3 corporation
wharton, texas
979-257-3377
www.smilingdogfarms.org
http://smilingdogfarms.blogspot.com
Please become a Smiling Dog Partner to Support Our Work
Your Monthly Tax-Deductible Gift Gives Hope to the Forgotten,Neglected & Rejected
Just click on http://smilingdogfarms.org/Donations_Page.html
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