Hurricane Ike

Man, oh man. Hurricane fitigue is right. Another big one is about to enter the Gulf of Mexico. Current predictions show Houston getting a direct hit. This may change as it often does, but still. We have to plan and be prepared to leave. So many people have the attitude that evacuating for Rita was a waste of time, so they'll never evacuate again. Don't they realize we were lucky to dodge a bullet? Rita did hit and Rita did devistate. Luckily, it just wasn't us.

Does it really hurt to be prepared? We keep some simple canned goods, a full tank of propane, and a case of water handy through the whole hurricane season. We also have D batteries and full gas tanks. How hard is that? Of course, there is this really weird phenominon when the last hurricane threat was merely 2 weeks ago and people are rushing to stock up. Really, did you drink all that bottled water and eat all your canned goods? Now you're rushing back to the store? Why didn't you just save what you had? Beyond me, some people are...

Sadly, though, people in Houston have started to mock erring on the side of caution. I just don't get it. Safe is better than sorry when you have a family to worry about.

We certainly won't evacuate for every storm, but if a Cat 4 looks like it's coming for Houston, we're outta here. We'll leave early, beating the rush of people who say "no, no, no" until it looks imminent. After all, it's always fun to go to Austin or San Antonio or Corpus...

Here are the sites we follow religiously during the season:

Weather Underground

Storm Pulse

Also, to make sense of it all, the Houston Chronicle has a great blog by a weather nerd called SciGuy. He blogs tropical weather and simplifies all the graphs and charts and predictions, giving the average person a clear sense of what we're in for.

I hope it avoids us, but on the other hand I don't want NO to get anymore storms. The city is still not fully recovered from Katrina. At least we all know what to do and how to do it so much better now... Cross your fingers for us!