9/12 - 8:30pm - Ike's Messing With Texas. Big Time.

It may only be a Category 2, but Hurricane Ike sure is packing a punch to the Galveston/Houston area of Texas. This is a region right at sea-level, especially around Galveston Island. Add to that a 20+ foot storm surge and you've got a flooding problem of monstrous proportion. 40 percent of Galveston Island's residents have stayed behind, even after a ghastly warning from the Houston NWS Office:

PERSONS NOT HEEDING EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES MAY FACE CERTAIN DEATH.

That would certainly be enough to get me out of there! Ike's winds are at 110mph right now, which is a strong Category 2 storm:



Category 3 winds begin at 111mph, so it would only take a nudge in strength to have this upgraded. I'm noticing some intense re-wrapping near the eye going on in the IR satellite loop. I think this could signal some strengthening, but it's not for sure at this point. We'll see if the NHC agrees on the next outlook.

Landfall should take place tomorrow morning on Galveston Island. Let's hope this doesn't strengthen much overnight.

We're in for a small chance of showers for the remainder of tonight and tomorrow. It seems like the heavier rains will now goes further west on Sunday than once thought, so expect rain totals from .5" to 1" on Sunday into Monday morning. All next week will be in the 70's or lower 80's at most.

Get ready for the new Ryan Weather website tomorrow! Check your bookmarks... If you have a bookmark or link that reads "http://ryanweather.googlepages.com", please change that over to http://www.ryanweather.org, otherwise it will not work after tomorrow morning. This is changing because I am dropping Google as my hosting service and the site will now be natively found at ryanweather.org instead of being redirected. If you normally visit Ryan Weather through www.ryanweather.org, then you're set to go!