Hurricane Ike - Sep 2008

Robert Readiger's hurricane story.

This is my story of my experience with hurricane Ike. I've been through a few hurricanes and tropical storms here during my life time in the La Porte and Deer Park area along the coat of the Gulf of Mexico.

Hurricane Alicia hit us in the 1983 as a category 3 storm while I was a teenager in my parent's home in Deer Park. This also happens to be the same place I hunkered down in for this storm called Ike. Alicia did quite a bit of damage to our area, but I don't remember it being quite as bad as this storm though. In the late 1980's, a category 1 storm came right through this area as well. I remember lots of wind, but almost no damage occurred during that storm. In 2005, hurricane Rita threatened us and my family evacuated to north Texas taking about 33 hours to get to our destination. Rita eventually turned northward and hit Louisiana, but the evacuation was a horrible experience and I vowed that I would never do that again. Tropical storm Gustav gave us a visit just a few months ago closing down NASA for a few days, but had no real effect on us.

Once hurricane Ike entered the gulf, initial forecasts put the hurricane near Corpus Christi, but eventually all forecasts pointed directly to us. Hurricane Ike was listed as a category 2 storm when it made landfall, but has been reported as a minimal category 3 storm from some reports with a storm surge in areas that were similar to a category 4.

I expected some wind and lots of rain from Ike. What we got was not as much rain, but lots of wind. The storm came right through my place with near category 3 winds and a large eye wall that gave us about 40 minutes of peace before the second half of the storm came through worse than the first. The winds were much worse than I had anticipated. I live in La Porte in a moderate and inexpensive house from today's standards (a mobile home built in 1964) and expected this hurricane to be something I shouldn't fear too much because of the category 2 rating. I stayed at my mother's place in Deer Park (a well built brick home) during this storm and was astonished by the strength of the winds as this hurricane blew through our area. This storm was much worse than I remember of Alicia.

This is a chronological story of my experience with hurricane Ike. 

   

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