Well… here’s the story.
We kept seeing Ike go south of us last week – and so I was pretty intent on riding it out. 50 MPH winds, 5-8″ of rain if it hit Brownsville or Victoria. It didn’t seem bad. So, Wednesday thru the day we watched the track go more north, and more north… and figured we’d make a determination on Thursday. So, Thursday AM, the track was Freeport, TX, which is about 80 miles down the coast. Not too bad, but the hurricane force winds were so WIDESPREAD in Ike – up to 110mi out from center, that I started to consider where we’d go. Then at noon on Thursday, they evacuated everything south of us due to the expected storm surge (20-24′ est.) which would put most of everything up to Clear Lake under water. And traffic got hairy for about 5 hours as Clear Lake, League City and 1/2 of Galveston ran north.
Then, my wife’s sister-in-law called and said they were leaving to Dallas and wanted to know if we wanted to room in the same hotel she was booking at (she’s a travel agent). She talked with my wife and then we were leaving.
So, we packed up for 4 days, got the kids stuff, removed everything out of the yard, got things secured as best we could, took down my satellite dish (thinking frisbee!) and we locked up and left to my sis-in-laws in NW houston. We got there without much traffic at all, and ate, and left around midnight. We went NW toward Waco to avoid i-45 – it was heavy 1/2 to Dallas. Got to dallas around 5am, and watched and watched the news.
We got a call Saturday from a good family friend that he drove by my house and my south fence is “wobbly”, but no damage and my 3 year old oak tree fared well.
Still, my neighborhood doesn’t have power (but some around me do) and I’ve heard the grocery store and Walgreens around the corner are open, but they only have non-perishables – so we’re staying in Dallas until authorities say it’s ok to return home – which might be the end of the week.
So, in Dallas, I have AC, food, power, TV, and we’re safe. In Houston, we’d be at my sister-in-law’s with limited rations and almost no gas supply (oh, and no Internet). I’m still very glad for the kid’s sake that we left. We’re just trying to determine when we can return and have some semblance of normal services.
One of the most “holy cow” things I’ve seen is Kemah – the Boardwalk is all but washed away – and there’s water still over the area where my family and I ate just last Wednesday.