The storm will come..and go
September 11, 2008 (Thursday)
The watch area for Hurricane Ike extends from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Baffin Bay, south of Corpus Christi. The hurricane forecaster wrote last night, “Everyone in the Hurricane Watch area has about the same risk of hurricane conditions.”
I left Houston to conduct a funeral in Rockport Monday morning, and at that time the long range forecast showed the storm headed for Galveston and Houston. After arrival in Rockport, the forecast moved the target southward during the day and that evening the local meteorologist was telling us the target was then Corpus Christi. On Tuesday, they were saying Baffin Bay (Kingsiville) or even Mexico maybe. Yesterday when I left Rockport to return to Houston, the forecast was Port Lavaca, and last evening it seemed to be Freeport, with the remark by the Houston meteorologist that the Houston-Galveston area may be the point of landfall of the eye. Whew! What an anticipation dilemma! Confused? I sure am. This is, however, such a large storm that communities will feel its effect up and down the Texas Gulf coast. Many places south of Highway 35 in the Port Lavaca-Bay City area have been placed under mandatory evacuation orders. Those may be extended to other places today. Landfall is now predicted to take place before daylight Saturday.
I have a campaign button from the 1952 presidential campaign that says, “I like Ike.” I also have one from that same year that says, “I go Pogo.” If I were wearing one of them today, it would be the IGP.
There’s an old saying that seems appropriate: “This, too, shall pass.”