Hurricane Ike

Here are some pictures from Hurricane Ike, we ended up evacuating to Mississippi to be with Forrest since he was going to be gone for a whole week. Being without power was quite stressful and since we didn't have daycare for Luke I wasn't able to work, anyway. It was fun flying home with Daddy flying the plane! Leighla was allowed to be loose in the cabin - she wasn't too sure what to think of it all. Luke did great on his third plane trip, I think we are getting a seasoned traveler already! Life is finally starting to return to normal, power is back on, trees and debris is getting cleaned up, and no more lines for gas/food/ice!!! Thank you again for all your support during this trying time, the whole family appreciates it!

Here is a brief video clip of the storm, it was such a beautiful sunset as Ike was making landfall in Galveston (80 miles south of us). Notice how quickly the clouds are moving in relation to the trees. The night time clip is dark but you can still see the power of the wind and the wind blowing in an east to west direction. By morning the wind was blowing west to east, and there is a sampling of some of the damage. Our neighborhood was really very lucky, no trees into homes or anything, although lots of downed trees, as you can see! We were really lucky that we had no damage to our home or yard....one of the unforeseen benefits of living in a new neighborhood with relatively few trees! Ike was still a category 1 storm when it passed over us, and the eye passed just next to our home, so we got the highest velocity winds for the longest period of time...thus the damage to the power lines and transformers. Again, we were truly LUCKY!



Here are some other pics and a neat link that shows you the official track and wind force, we are the dot right above Houston, basically the last yellow dot before it turns green (80-90mph winds). In the last picture we live just north of the bigger red "loop" on I-45.:

http://www.stormpulse.com/hurricane-ike-2008