The high water along our Mississippi coast described in my last post dropped with the ebbing tide last night. I am awaiting what comes today with the next high tide.
Last night about 5:00PM after I left a client's home over in Long Beach, I was waiting to turn onto US90. Looking out over the Gulf as far as I could see wave after wave marched westward almost parallel to the beach. The ocean level a mile or so out looked decidedly higher than the shoreline. We are on the eastern fringe of the wind field and it is still quite strong enough to bow and bend the trees and limbs.
Sitting in the dining tent earlier at 6:00AM drinking my tea, the rattling tent walls were quite the distraction but not a real threat. However, the gusts that rock of my RV as I write this are more disconcerting.
As a scienist/engineer, I am completely fascinated with the massive size and behavior of this hurricane. At 5:00AM Ike had strengthened from 100 mph to 105 mph. Where the wind speed will stop increasing, no one knows with certainty.
Almost forgotten in my attention to Ike, the remnant of Jospehine is lurking in the Atlantic near Haiti and the Dominican Republic. What is that one going to do?
In an earlier e-mail to a colleague I had expressed relief that his meteorologist friend had quite accurately hypothesized that most of this season's storms would take a southerly route.
It doesn't take much to turn scientific curiosity and relief into grief. That wind against my RV is foreboding the disaster that lies ahead about 1:00AM tonight in the Galveston area and eastward. I heard on the radio that the NHC or NWS released a statement that anyone in Galveston who lives in one or two story residence faces certain death if they stay behind today.
God help them all.
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