This one is for Texas --IKE

[Bird]

Harvey, I didn't realize it rained that much that close to us. I only got a grand total of .4" of rain. Hope the ear infection's clearing up.

 

[MossRoad]

We had over 4.5" of rain yesterday in South Bend.... Indiana! Rainiest day on record ever, here. And the remnants of Ike are supposed to dump right on us tonight.

 

[jinman]

Harvey, I didn't realize it rained that much that close to us. I only got a grand total of .4" of rain. Hope the ear infection's clearing up.

Harvey, as Bird says, I hope your ear infection is better.

I got about 3/4" of rain, and I'm surprised I got more than Bird. We had one of the outer bands pass over just after noon and it included a heavy rain cell. There was almost no wind associated with the rain, just a downpour.

My daughter told me that my ex-FIL in ********* was not so lucky. I've always envied his huge pine and oak trees in his yard. One of those big oaks came crashing down on his house and destroyed his guest bedroom. Some relatives had come from Baytown to escape the storm and ended up being almost killed by the tree. They had slept in the very bed that had a huge limb sticking into it. Close call.

The news showed some pretty significant damage in Tyler last night. I hope Eddie, Steph and family are okay. They probably had a power interuption as an minimum.

 

[texbaylea]

From the house I see a lot of small branches have come down but nothing major. I had planned to survey the place today but we have rain encroaching from the south so I will wait. That is a sunny day job.

Harvey - hope you get better, there are not many things more painful than an ear infection.

I hope that Eddie and Steph have come through OK.

Vernon

 

[EddieWalker]

It's been 24 hours since my last post, and we've been without power since then. I'm on generator right now and there's no clue as to how long the power will be out. We're limiting what we use for power as there's only 20 amps on the generator to draw from. The refrigerator and freezer are plugged in right now as is the computer and our cell phones. We'll trade off of the computer to turn on the TV when we want to watch the news. We don't have any hot water, and that will become an issue for Steph to go to work tomorrow and the kids to get cleaned up for school. I'll just take a cold shower if I have to.

The city of Tyler said that over 13,000 homes were without power in the county the last time we saw the news before bed last night.

It was Tropical Storm Ike when it came over us. Winds were clocked at 52mph at the highest, but most of them were in the 30 to 40mhp range. It would go from mild to strong gusts, which is probably where the damage came from. Allot of big old oaks fell on homes. There were no injuries so far, so that's good. Some of the power poles took direct hits from the trees and they were snapped off. What ever else happened to the power is still a mystery.

Our rain gauge has 2 1/4 inches of rain in it. It was a farily mild rain without any thunder or lightning. On Monday, we had a front go through that droped 3 inches in three hours. That was heavy rain!!!!!! So for the week, we're over 5 inches of rain, which might explain why the trees fell with 40 mhp winds. The ground was already saturated.

I went for a walk this morning and noticed plenty of small branches on the ground, but nothing serious. Lake Marabou is full, so that's nice. I never thought to see that in September.

Eddie

 

[dmccarty]

I am glad to hear the Texas TBNers have gotten through ok.

I have been surfing web pages and the flooding looks bad but I can't tell how wide spread it is. More importantly loss of life is really low. Let hope it stays that way. From the reports of people NOT leaving and the storm surge its been worrisome.

It took up to two weeks for power to be restored after Fran and Floyd. We were lucky in that we were in an old subdivision that had power lines from a major road and transmission line. To clear the road and restore power our lines got turned out after 12 hours. Which is nothing. The new richer subdivision next to us took a good week to get power. Us poor folk had it good.

When the power was out people were outside. Talking and the kids playing. As soon as power was restored you never saw a soul. Just as it always was.

Hope Ike just caused a bunch of property loss.

Take Care,
Dan

 

[txdon]

FYI: By noon Sunday, Bastrop (130 miles from Houston) Home Depot, has sold all 50 of their Generators ($699-$799).

 

[Bird]

Don, I found that even our Walmart way up north here was sold out of D cell flashlight batteries early yesterday morning (and I bought the last 6 across the street at Radio Shack) and before the day was over yesterday Walmart was sold out of water! Can you imagine how many brands and kinds of bottled water they stock now? I would never have thought about them selling out of water.

 

[tallyho8]

FYI: By noon Sunday, Bastrop (130 miles from Houston) Home Depot, has sold all 50 of their Generators ($699-$799).

The bad part is the people who just hoard the generators keeping those who need them from getting them. They will buy a generator before the storm and just leave it in the box and if they don't need it then they will return it in a couple of weeks after the storm for a refund when it is too late for others to use it.

Our local Home Depots have stopped issuing refunds on generators when the box has been unsealed but this does not stop the hoarders.

 

[Bird]

The bad part is the people who just hoard the generators keeping those who need them from getting them. They will buy a generator before the storm and just leave it in the box and if they don't need it then they will return it in a couple of weeks after the storm for a refund when it is too late for others to use it.

Our local Home Depots have stopped issuing refunds on generators when the box has been unsealed but this does not stop the hoarders.

This reminds me of when I bought a carpet cleaning machine at Sears a few years ago. They had a bunch of "slightly used" machines that had been returned and if they'd had the model I wanted, I'd have bought one of those at a considerable savings. People buy them, clean their carpets, then return them and say they're not dissatisfied with the machine. To my way of thinking, those buyers of carpet cleaning machines and those buyers of the generators are simply common thieves.

 

[billbill1]

Our daughter, SIL, and 2 small boys stayed in Dallas to avoid Ike. Their home came out fine, they live in Humble but were told that they could be without electricity for up to a month. The daughter and 2 boys are coming in tonight and stay with us until power is restored.

 

[RobJ]

We got hammered in Spring. Eye went by just to the east, the wind died down but never stopped. Cleaning up the mess now, we only suffered some broken windows. A pine top just missed the kitchen. It was bad. No power, no water, etc. On generator now and the phone/DSL just came back up. Taking baths in the pool hehe!! more storms last night that were not related I don't think and caused some flooding. Just stopped raining this afternoon. It was a REALLY wet one. Rita was a dry one.

try and get some pics tomorrow, gotta run..and put more gas in the gen!!

 

[Bird]

I certainly wish you good luck on getting the power and water back on. We're so accustomed to electric power that it's hard to do without it very long. And glad to hear you have a generator.

 

[texasjohn]

Whole thing missed me in Jarrell, north of Austin.... no wind, no rain, two 10.5 hr round trips to Corpus to pick up and return my MIL... Corpus had no leaves in streets.... no significant effect at all that I could see from the storm

We really need rain... extreme drought now.

 

[Tdog]

HelloTexas neighbors, I've been watching DTV channel 361. They are showing channel 11 KHOU from Houston around the clock. Too reminiscent of our broadcasts from over here. Those rains you experienced this morning were associated with a cool front, a real blessing if you have hurricane clean up to do and are without power.

My sister lives in Richmond & only lost power for an hour - - she realizes how very fortunate they were. A niece in Vidor got hit pretty bad with 18 trees down. I've only been able to reach her once.

My thoughts & prayers are with you all.

Jack

 

[MossRoad]

We ended up with 11" of rain in South Bend, Indiana over the Fri, Sat and Sun period. That is a record setter.

My wife took some veggy scraps out to the composter Sunday and set the large, empty mixing bowl on the walkway at 10:00a.m. By 4:00 PM it was full of water!

 

[jinman]

We ended up with 11" of rain in South Bend, Indiana over the Fri, Sat and Sun period. That is a record setter.

Moss, I was really surprised to see that Ike had strengthened and hammered the Midwest as it went through. You not only had winds, but torrential rains to add to your already wet ground. The final dollar figure for losses from this storm are going to be staggering. I would encourage anyone to make whatever contribution they can to the charity of their choice. Lots of folks are hurting and need our help.

 

[Bird]

We ended up with 11" of rain in South Bend, Indiana over the Fri, Sat and Sun period. That is a record setter.

My wife took some veggy scraps out to the composter Sunday and set the large, empty mixing bowl on the walkway at 10:00a.m. By 4:00 PM it was full of water!

I think that would be a new record for me, too, if we ever got that much in that length of time.

With just the little bit of rain we got and the cooler weather (56 degrees this morning is hard to believe) you can almost see the grass growing. Lawns are greener than they've been in awhile, and I mowed yesterday afternoon. It had been 6 days since I mowed and it was needing it bad.

 

[JESSE1]

The eye went over us Saturday evening. We had wind gusts up to 70 mph. I had three large oak trees blown down in the pasture. The cows had been under these trees shortly before they blew down. I had seen the cows moving away from the trees and a short time later I saw the trees were down. I rode down to check but no cows were under them. Had a few trees fall on my fences.
We lost power for about 6 hours. I hooked up my Miller Trailblazer and ran lights and refrigerator until the power came back on. Longview took a bad hit on power. It may be a week before they have it back on.

 

[Mike120]

We lucked out! Ike was headed straight for us and then went to the east so we got the clean side. We got winds in the 80's but had minimal damage. It was a bit breezy! All the horses kept their butts into the wind and their heads down and they were fine. Power came on for about 20 minutes Saturday but then a transformer down the road cooked off. We got power back late yesterday afternoon.

I have to say the media is still acting like fools, asking really dumb questions, and making some pretty stupid statements, but the Houston City, Harris County, State, and Federal government agencies are doing a great job.