A: This LiveBlog, of course. *groans from the audience*
Yes, yours truly will be LiveBlogging Hurricane Ike over the course of today, giving you information, analysis, and really anything that pops up in my mind as Hurricane Ike takes aim at the Upper Texas Coast. Yours truly is sitting comfortably in Teaching on Mars HQ (Read: The back bedroom/office of my house) here in the middle of Franklin. Check back in throughout the day to see the posts updated with new information.
Important Links to keep an eye on this weekend:
KATC TV3
Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness
National Weather Service- Lake Charles Office
National Hurricane Center
1725: The National Weather Service has just issued a Tornado Warning for western St. Mary, Iberia, and southeastern Lafayette Parishes. The text went as follows:
* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
NORTHWESTERN IBERIA PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
THIS INCLUDES...NEW IBERIA...JEANERETTE...
EXTREME SOUTHEASTERN LAFAYETTE PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
WEST CENTRAL ST. MARTIN PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
THIS INCLUDES ST. MARTINVILLE...
WESTERN ST. MARY PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
THIS INCLUDES...FRANKLIN...BURNS POINT...
EXTREME NORTHEASTERN VERMILION PARISH IN SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA...
* UNTIL 545 PM CDT
* AT 510 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING A TORNADO 9 MILES EAST OF
BURNS POINT...MOVING NORTHWEST AT 69 MPH.
* THE TORNADO WILL BE NEAR...
FRANKLIN BY 525 PM CDT...
BALDWIN AND 6 MILES SOUTHWEST OF CHARENTON BY 530 PM CDT...
JEANERETTE BY 535 PM CDT...
NEW IBERIA AND LYDIA BY 540 PM CDT...
7 MILES SOUTH OF ST. MARTINVILLE BY 545 PM CDT...
Rather than be a sensible person and go to a secure room with no windows, I went to my front door and peeked out. I didn't see anything and upon getting back to my computer I saw the squall was passing on the South end of town. Thankfully no visible tornado, but this is the beginning of a rather large rain band that stretches the length of the coastline all the way down past Point au Fer Island in southwest Terrebonne Parish and into the Gulf of Mexico. The squall is moving to the northwest at 69 mph, so if anything can be positive to come out of it, it'll be over quickly.
Weather Conditions: Winds from the southeast at around 32 mph, gusting up to 48 mph. Precipitation in the form of squally showers.
1800: I have to give it to my cable network. They break in on any channel you're watching and put it on the Weather Channel, sound an annoying siren sound effect, and announce that there's a Tornado Warning. Since I'm here at my PC, I just hop over to the National Weather Service tab that I have open in Firefox to see what's up. Half of the time the warning they're announcing for us doesn't even involve Franklin, but it's nice to know that they care. The following warning just popped up:
* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
NORTHWESTERN IBERIA PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
THIS INCLUDES...NEW IBERIA...JEANERETTE...
EXTREME SOUTHEASTERN LAFAYETTE PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
WEST CENTRAL ST. MARTIN PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
THIS INCLUDES ST. MARTINVILLE...
NORTHWESTERN ST. MARY PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
THIS INCLUDES FRANKLIN...
EXTREME NORTHEASTERN VERMILION PARISH IN SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA...
* UNTIL 615 PM CDT
* AT 544 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING A TORNADO NEAR
JEANERETTE...MOVING NORTHWEST AT 63 MPH.
That was an interesting warning , putting us in Franklin at the tail end of the Warning quadrilateral when the cell was ten miles to the northeast of us. I'm not complaining though. Better safe than sorry.
Weather Conditions: Winds from the southeast at around 32 mph, gusting up to 41 mph. Precipitation in the form of squally showers varying in intensity.
1805: Another ten minute stretch, another Tornado Warning:
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN LAKE CHARLES HAS ISSUED A
* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
NORTHEASTERN IBERIA PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
SOUTHEASTERN ST. MARTIN PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
THIS INCLUDES STEPHENSVILLE...
ST. MARY PARISH IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA...
THIS INCLUDES...PATTERSON...MORGAN CITY...BERWICK...BAYOU VISTA...
* UNTIL 630 PM CDT
* AT 549 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED
SEVERAL POSSIBLE TORNADOES ACROSS ST. MARY AND LOWER ST. MARTIN
PARISHES...WITH THE BEST INDICATION JUST NORTH OF PATTERSON. ALL
WERE MOVING NORTHWEST AT 50 MPH.
* THE TORNADO WILL BE NEAR...
RURAL NORTHEASTERN IBERIA PARISH AT 610 PM CDT
RURAL NORTHERN ST. MARY PARISH AT 610 PM CDT
RURAL CENTRAL ST. MARTIN PARISH AT 610 PM CDT
RURAL NORTHERN IBERIA PARISH AT 620 PM CDT
Weather Conditions: Winds from the southeast at around 35 mph, gusting up to 41 mph. Precipitation in the form of squally showers varying in intensity.
1925: The squall line that produced the tornado warnings during the past hour continues, but now it's shifted a bit to the north, with most of the squalls over the Atchafalaya Basin. This leaves us in Franklin in a bit of a gap between the squalls that form the body of Ike and this big rain band. The winds continue to blow, but the rain has stopped for the time being. Here's the weather situation based on the NWS radar out of Lake Charles (I'm in the southeast corner in Franklin):
Weather Conditions: Winds from the southeast at around 35 mph, gusting up to 41 mph. Precipitation in the form of squally showers, but they have slacked off in the last 15 minutes.
2020: I've been peeking around for any news on the Cypriot freighter that was stranded between Port Arthur and Galveston that was going to have to ride out Ike at sea, and I was able to find an update: According to the Houston Chronicle, the ship, the Antalina, was still afloat this afternoon, and the US Coast Guard actually attempted a rescue, but had to turn back due to deteriorating conditions, stated in the article to be 20 ft seas, 90 mph winds, and visibility down to 0.5 miles. Yikes.
This of course is a rather unfortunate situation, but the question comes up about whether these guys actually watched the weather before setting out. Nowadays getting caught at sea in a hurricane can virtually always be blamed on human error based on the amount of weather information that's at a ship captain's fingertips.
This wasn't always the case, as was evidenced by the US Navy's run in with a Typhoon in the Philippines Sea in December 1944. By all indications Typhoon Cobra had maximum sustained winds of 145 mph and tore through Admiral Bull Halsey's Carrier Task Force. Three destroyers, the USS Spence, Hull, and Monaghan were sunk, and the light aircraft carrier USS Monterey had to fight several fires caused by aircraft coming loose and crashing in the hangars due to the wave action. These fires were put our through sheer determination led by several of the junior officers, including the future President of the United States Gerald Ford.
This wasn't the US Navy's only run-in with hurricanes. In fact, the US Navy has had its ships dealing with hurricanes almost from the beginning. A great website recapping these accounts is the FAQ page at the Naval Historical Center's website. Among other works of literature worth checking out if this has piqued your interest would be The Thirteen-gun Salute, a magnificent work in the Aubrey-Maturin series written by Patrick O'Brian, Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, the final book in the Horatio Hornblower saga by CS Forester, and if you're in the mood for some dense but engaging nonfiction, I can heartily recommend Stephen Taylor's Storm and Conquest: The Clash of Empires in the Eastern Seas, 1809 (Review of the Paperback edition released a year ago in the UK). I listened to the audiobook edition of the book, and Taylor's account of the cyclones that struck the East India Fleet were perhaps the most chillingly dramatic prose I have ever read or listened to. Fantastic stuff, but not for everyone.
Weather Conditions: Winds from the east-southeast at around 35 mph, gusting up to 45 mph. Precipitation in the form of squally showers, which have just started back up. A cell that just raced by Franklin began to rotate, and as a result the National Weather Service released a Tornado Warning for it.
2100: The National Weather Service in Lake Charles has had a blog up and running for Hurricane Ike all day it seems, but too bad they only decided to advertise it in the past 30 minutes. Check it out by following this link. In addition, if you're in the mood to catch the reports of storm damage, storm surge, tornadoes, and all of the other fun stuff that accompanies a hurricane, the National Weather Service also has their Storm Report text reports up and running too. Just follow the link. As of this moment, the latest report is of hurricane-force wind gusts at the NOS tide station in Cameron. Yikes.
Weather Conditions: Winds from the east-southeast still around 35 mph, still gusting up to 45 mph on occasion. Precipitation in the form of squally showers, which have just slacked off.
2130: I decided to pass along some of my information about the winds to the National Weather Service. It was rather surreal to call the NWS office at 9:15PM and get the automated attendant. Even stranger was to dial the forecaster's extension and someone actually pick up the phone. A nice conversation ensued and I passed along the information about the 48 mph gust we had here in town I mentioned in the 1725 report. I asked him about the storm surge forecast for here and he said that they're expecting an 8ft storm surge at the coast, and possibly expect some backwater flooding from the Teche in portions of town because of the intrustion of the storm surge. That's what I figured, so that makes me feel a lot better.
One quick link: I was looking for contact information on the NWS Lake Charles website and I found a cool, if sombering link. Here is the radar imagery of the debris plume from the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia back in 2003.
Weather Conditions: Winds from the east-southeast around 35 mph, gusting up to 40 mph on occasion. Precipitation in the form of squally showers, slacked off about 20 minutes ago.
2200: Last entry for the evening. The 2200 advisory is out for Ike, and the motion and speed remains the same, but the wind speed has changed: Ike now has maximum sustained winds at 110 mph, the same speed that Gustav's winds made at landfall twelve days ago. The coordinates put Ike 54 miles southeast of Galveston Island, and if Ike continues on this path, landfall will be on Galveston Island approximately 6 miles northeast of St. Luis Pass.
As for here in Franklin, we still aren't seeing a lot of rain as compared to what Lafayette and New Iberia are seeing, but the body of Ike has passed to the west enough that we are now between two feeder bands rather than a feeder band and the storm itself. This trend from the long range radars looks like it might continue for a while, so we may be spared heavy rainfall until at least tomorrow. Unfortunately, crunch time is on the horizon for us here in Franklin as the wind is about to switch to the South, and with it the storm surge. High tide is expected just after midnight, so we'll see what happens.
Weather Conditions: Winds from the south-southeast around 40 mph, gusting up to 45 mph on occasion. Precipitation in the form of squally showers, one of which just blew through as I was typing this update.
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