Rescue and Recovery from Hurricane Ike

Well, Hurricane Ike has made his presence known for sure. He tore through first, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, causing devastation as a major hurricane, even as he barrelled into Cuba, becoming the 3rd and 4th tropical cyclone landfall in Cuba this year, the second major hurricane landfall there this year. Fortunately for the US coast, Cuba broke Ike down... some, forcing him to pull his only energy from what was available in the Gulf of Mexico. There, he grew from a small and still quite powerful hurricane to a very large and extremely powerful hurricane, eventually making landfall as an extremely dangerous, just under category 3 hurricane with a huge wind field, an impressive and destructive storm surge and lots of rain. Galveston took the bulk of the hit...

The storm's force spread a swath of destruction across a 500-mile (800-kilometer) span of the coast, largely cut off oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, and caused at least eight billion dollars in onshore damage. ~source

Unfortunately, Galveston was also an area where a depressingly large portion of the population decided to ignore the very stern warnings from local authorities and the National Weather Service and instead chose to "ride it out". Subsequently, in the midst of the worst of it, realizing they probably chose poorly, making thousands of futile calls to emergency management, who had already warned that they had no intention of deploying, thereby endangering, rescue crews during the worst of the storm to save people who were told not to be there in the first place. Now, in the wake of the monster storm, Ike, one of the largest search and rescue efforts in Texas history is underway to uncover victims of this devastating hurricane.

More than 2.2 million people fled inland but more than 100,000 residents of low-lying areas -- including 20,000 in Galveston alone -- decided to ride out the storm despite dire warnings from the national weather service forecasting a lethal storm surge. ~source

Unfortunately, the impacts of this hurricane are going to have a far-reaching impact, beyond the immediate damage to property. The larger US impact began on Friday when several gas stations, at least locally and certainly on a larger scale, raised prices in anticipation of a significant shortage in coming days. Prices rose 50 cents locally between morning and lunchtime, from about $3.50 to $4, and by the time I was traveling home Friday evening, gas station lines were flowing out into traffic at almost every station, prices had risen to over $4.50 in some places and there was talk this some of the smaller neighboring town had run out of gas altogether. This panicked reaction was spawned by the oil refineries shutting down in anticipation of Ike's arrival. Unfortunately, it appears that those refineries could be down for a week or more and supply may be temporarily impeded. Memories of school closures resulting after Katrina's supply flow was cut linger in people's minds. OK, OK, that's enough about Ike for now... The pictures I posted above of the cool shelf cloud were not actually Ike induced. They were actually associated with an itty bitty thunderstorm we had yesterday afternoon... the shelf cloud was much more impressive than the actual thunderstorm.

Now, I would like to share with you some artwork that Mini-Dew made me to include on my blog. Check it out...Oh and check out the labeled "twister" in the sunset shot... (I won't tell her it's just a dust devil...)Thanks, Mini-Dew!

Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing a corona around the nearly full moon as a field of altocumulus moved in around the moon. It was quite dramatic while I was taking the doggone dog outside, but by the time I got the tripod and set it up, much of the cloud field had moved on... sigh.
In closing, I want to share with you something Deirdre, the Reluctant Farm Chik introduced me to... It's a wordle, and it shows word use emphasis within a blog in a cool graphic arrangement. I, of course... had to create one. I love the emphasis on my key blog words. Not surprisingly... HURRICANE seems the prominent word lately... Create your own, here. Thanks to http://wordle.net/ and Deirdre. Godspeed in recovery from Ike and blessings of His peace!
~Dewdrop