hurricane1.jpgOur U.S. readers probably know that Hurricane Ike is currently in the Gulf of Mexico, menacing the Upper Texas coast and possibly Louisiana (that sweet pic up there is Ike, way back on Sept. 4th). What most of our readers probably don’t realize is that SF Signal World HQ is located in Houston, Tx, which sits about 60 miles inland from Galveston, on the Upper Texas Coast.

The upshot, Ike has been causing major nervousness around these here parts for the better part of two days now. The current track has Ike coming in right over Galveston, and making a right turn over downtown Houston and accosting parts north of the city. Luckily, the storm track has been slowly moving up the coast, away from Houston, and us. Also, the intensity was forecast to be a Category 3, maybe 4, is now expected to be a 2 when it hits sometime Friday night. Hopefully, the track will continue to move off to the north east and leave us on the ‘clean’ side of the storm.

In any event, if you suddenly notice a lack of bloggage over the weekend and into next week, you can blame Ike. I’m expecting, right now, Thursday night, that we will lose power sometime tomorrow night for an indeterminate amount of time. The last big storm to hit Houston was Alicia in 1983, and we were without power for about 2 weeks. Ike is bigger, in size, than Alicia, although they are both Cat 2s at this time. So, John, Tim, Kevin and myself are busy battening down the hatches, scouring the store shelves for anything the panicked crowds have left behind, and generally getting ready to ride this out.

We’ll have stuff tomorrow, but who knows for how long after that? We could be gone for days, or not at all. It’s a waiting game, and I hate waiting games. Good thing I have some Prilosec handy.

If you’re keen on tracking the storm yourself, do yourself a favor and visit the awesomely cool storm tracking site: Storm Pulse. I can only imagine how much traffic they now getting. They seemed to come from nowhere and I’ve been telling everyone I know about. In fact, they must be getting popular because my Dad knew about it, and I didn’t even tell him about the site. That, my friends, means you are popular. I still have to remind him about our site.

Nothing SF here, but, really, think of all the science involved in this post. The ISS, the Shuttle to get to the ISS, the satellites watching Ike and all the computing power involved in forecasting and tracking hurricanes. It’s awesome, and something we all take for granted.

If anyone is interested, I’ll be Twittering the hurricane. You can follow that at our Twitter page. Currently, a little windy and warm.

Related posts:

  1. Night Watch in Houston
  2. Galactica’s Razor Coming To The Big Screen, Houston Screwed Again
  3. Snowing in Houston
  4. SFSignal Update
  5. REVIEW: Hurricane Moon by Alexis Glynn Latner

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