Weather Update and Hurricane History
Sep. 15th, 2008 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI never would have known there was a hurricane passing so closely by just noticing the local weather. The only unusual thing I noticed was that the clouds were very interesting. (We tend to have either a blue sky or a white sky most of the time.) That's because Ike abruptly turned north when it hit land.
I met another person who didn't realize that the whole point of Houston is surviving hurricanes. Galveston was once the largest city in Texas, but it kept getting wrecked by hurricanes. After the 1900 hurricane, the Houston Ship Channel was "improved" to the point that it allowed Houston to replace Galveston as the most important port city in the state. That was also when Galveston's 17-foot seawall (breached by Ike's storm surge) was built. It looks like Houston's still in trouble now with many or most people dealing with power outages, lack of running water, and lots of broken windows, but doing better than Galveston.
The Hurricane of 1900 is still considered the deadliest natural disaster in the US with over 6,000 deaths. It was a category 4 hurricane, there was no seawall, people were not evacuated, and news of the destruction did not reach the mainland in time for help to arrive very quickly.
**
Today I declare it autumn. It was actually cool enough that I could imagine jogging outside and still surviving. And I actually did jog all the way to the bus stop this morning. Even at noon, I had to walk for twenty minutes at a good clip to thaw out from my overly air-conditioned office. Apparently, although the highs were in the upper nineties as usual this weekend, it barely got to 80 today and in some areas, it didn't even get that warm. My favorite weather source says, "There hasn't been a high in the 70s since May 12!"
I prefer my highs to be in the eighties. Warm, but not hot. I am hoping we don't skip those days again like we have in some past falls.
I met another person who didn't realize that the whole point of Houston is surviving hurricanes. Galveston was once the largest city in Texas, but it kept getting wrecked by hurricanes. After the 1900 hurricane, the Houston Ship Channel was "improved" to the point that it allowed Houston to replace Galveston as the most important port city in the state. That was also when Galveston's 17-foot seawall (breached by Ike's storm surge) was built. It looks like Houston's still in trouble now with many or most people dealing with power outages, lack of running water, and lots of broken windows, but doing better than Galveston.
The Hurricane of 1900 is still considered the deadliest natural disaster in the US with over 6,000 deaths. It was a category 4 hurricane, there was no seawall, people were not evacuated, and news of the destruction did not reach the mainland in time for help to arrive very quickly.
**
Today I declare it autumn. It was actually cool enough that I could imagine jogging outside and still surviving. And I actually did jog all the way to the bus stop this morning. Even at noon, I had to walk for twenty minutes at a good clip to thaw out from my overly air-conditioned office. Apparently, although the highs were in the upper nineties as usual this weekend, it barely got to 80 today and in some areas, it didn't even get that warm. My favorite weather source says, "There hasn't been a high in the 70s since May 12!"
I prefer my highs to be in the eighties. Warm, but not hot. I am hoping we don't skip those days again like we have in some past falls.