Our friend Ike is coming to visit.  It’s been a beautiful morning, with an unseasonably cool breeze from the north.  Traffic is light, and the sounds of the city are subdued, like a late Sunday morning.  Someone down the street is hammering plywood over their windows.  The center of the hurricane is poised to pass over Galveston; the further east the storm passes, the more we will be spared the worst of the wind and rain.

The plants and toys are secured outside; the house is tidied.  Forecasts predict we’ll get winds up to about 75mph at the house (those numbers below are in knots).

I’m more worried, I think, about flooding. 

We think about flooding just about every time it rains, though, so that’s nothing very new.

If we lose power/internet/landline/voice cell, we might still be able to send and receive texts.   

Our energy utility can be reached at 713-207-2222, 800-332-7143, or the CenterPoint Storm Center.  It looks like they might post a list of where power is out and when it might come back on. If they’re really nice, they’ll even post a map.  If for some reason we will be without power for an extended period of time, we’ll go off and visit the familia.

The NOAA radar for Houston (left picture) and satellite image (right picture) are found at the NOAA site for our zip code. 

A summary of how much rain has fallen is at the Harris County Office of Emergency Management.

The water from our neighborhood eventually drains into the Harris Gully, which has been directed underground.  You can see where it meets the Brays Bayou at floodalert.org.  It’s big (you
can drive a car through it), and if it’s full we’re in trouble.

We like Eric Berger’s hurricane summaries at the Chronicle the best.