Houston is flat and it sits very close to sea level 35 miles inland from Galveston Bay. It is crisscrossed with bayous which help to drain it after the water begins to go down, but in a storm surge, the water backs up. The Houston Ship Channel is as big as a river and makes Houston an inland port. Any tidal surge will bring flood waters right up that channel and into the refineries and chemical companies which line its banks. Because of the direction of air circulation, it is the backside of a hurricane which gets the tidal surge and the higher the wind, the higher the water goes.
HOUSTON - Gleaming skyscrapers, the nation's biggest refinery and NASA's Johnson Space Center lie in areas that could be vulnerable to wind and damaging floodwaters if Hurricane Ike crashes ashore as a major hurricane.
Forecasters expect the storm to make landfall this weekend somewhere between Corpus Christi and Houston, creating the potential for heavy punishment for Houston even if it's not hit directly.
Some forecasts say Ike could strengthen to a fearsome Category 4 hurricane with winds of at least 131 mph over the Gulf of Mexico, and emergency officials warned it could drive a storm surge as high as 18 feet.
If current projections of the storm's path hold up, the area surrounding Houston — home to about 4 million people — would be lashed by the eastern or "dirty" side of the storm, said meteorologist Jeff Masters, co-founder of San Francisco-based Weather Underground. This stronger side of the storm often packs heavy rains, walloping storm surge and tornadoes.
"I expect a lot of damage in Houston from this storm," said Masters, adding that Ike could cause a "huge storm surge" affecting at least 100 miles of the Texas coast.
...The surge in Galveston Bay could push floodwaters into Houston, damaging areas that include the nation's biggest refinery and NASA's Johnson Space Center.
...The oil and gas industry also watched the storm closely, fearing damage to the very heart of its operations.
Texas is home to 26 refineries that account for one-fourth of U.S. refining capacity, and most are clustered along the Gulf Coast in such places as Houston, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi. Exxon Mobil Corp.'s plant in Baytown, outside Houston, is the nation's largest refinery. Dow Chemical has a huge operation just north of Corpus Christi.
Refineries are built to withstand high winds, but flooding can disrupt operations and — as happened in Louisiana after Hurricane Gustav — power outages can shut down equipment for days or weeks. An extended shutdown could lead to higher gasoline prices.
My mother told me that my old home town is preparing for close to 20,000 evacuees.
ReplyDeleteI'm very thankful that all of my immediate family members relocated almost two hundred miles north of the city some years ago, but even they may have trouble with tornadoes depending on the storm's path. Here's hoping and praying that both of our families weather the storm without incident.
ReplyDeleteAmen
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