Houblog

Only thing left is to reinforce the garage door and a few odds and ends. I’m bushed. Wrote this one in snatches here and there also. (Don’t look to me for timely information, I’m just blogging my experiences and thoughts.) Weather is currently hot and humid, but clear, after some brief showers.

Word is, I-10 east is parking lot to the Trinity River. I-10 west has cleared out, until you reach Katy, then it’s solid to the Brazos river. I-45, well a family member had made it from I-10 to Conroe (about 30 miles). It took four hours. It’s cleared out behind that, but Conroe is bad. (Conroe is always bad, even on a normal day. I’ve bitched about that funnel before.) Hwy 290 is not too bad until you get way out. I missed any other reports.

Of the friends I have mentioned on this blog, only a few are left in the Houston area, these days.

Redneck Guy is in 77523, at the very top of the bay. I think it should have been ordered to evacuate earlier, and information is still hard to come by. He was already boarding up by the time they finally called it, and now I-10 is jammed. After his experience in Rita (24 hours on the road) he has chosen to board up and ride it out.

(I wonder how many people Rita is going to kill by proxy? I hope not me or my family members, but no one knows.)

Master Plan is on the ride-out crew at a Medical Center hospital. He’ll be safe, but he’s worried about his Clear Lake-area apartment being looted. To be safe, he’s going to pull the hard drives from his computers and put them in his backpack.

I’ve tried to reach Deacon but no luck. I suspect he’s going to ride it out with his sister, or if his mother returned to Port Arthur, he might have gone there.

El Jefe and Dr. Heinous relocated to Dallas a while back.

Hitman is in the Woodlands. Short of a tree falling on his house, he should be fine. (That is some risk, given the number of pines around his house.)

I don’t know about the Mack of Steel. (FYI, if I never explained his name before, he got it by using his time at the mike during an anime fan convention Q&A session to ask a voice actress out on a date.)

President Evil moved to Austin maybe five years ago.

Update: From the NHC 5pm advisory:

BECAUSE OF THE VERY LARGE EXPANSE OF HURRICANE FORCE WINDS…IKE WILL CREATE A STORM SURGE WELL IN EXCESS OF WHAT WOULD NORMALLY BE ASSOCIATED WITH A STORM OF ITS INTENSITY.

Commenter Andrew over at Brendan’s site remarked:

Ugh. My coworker has elderly parents that live right on the water’s edge in Clear Lake, TX, and refuse to evacuate after their Rita experience. Instead they are boarding up the townhouse and taking the oxygen tank to the third floor to wait it out.

My other coworker from Houston is adamant that scores of people, also scarred from the botched Rita evac, will stay. This is bad, bad news if everything you guys are blogging ends up being accurate.

Personally, I’m now pulling for Ike to keep turning right and give us the left side of the hurricane. Otherwise, even if it weakens all the way down to a tropical storm, it’s still going to be riding a big dome of water. What it sounds like is that Ike’s been having an extended eyewall replacement cycle, and now that the pressure is dropping again (after rising a bit) we’re looking at it finally getting it’s act together. Based on how light the highway traffic is this time, compared to before, a lot of people have stayed. Galveston authorities estimate that 20% of the island’s residents did not evacuate.

All I have to say about that is, if we get the worst-case scenario, this year’s Darwin Award should be a collective award.

Update 2: From Dr. Jeff Masters: “According to the NOAA tide gauges, the storm tides along the Mississippi coast have peaked at 4 feet above normal, and are currently running 5 feet above normal on the east side of New Orleans at Shell Beach in Lake Borgne. A storm surge of 5.9 feet was observed in New Orleans’ Industrial Canal at 10:45 am CDT, and 5.75 feet in Waveland, Mississippi. Coastal Alabama is reporting a 4-6 foot storm surge, with 10-15 foot waves. Considering the center of Ike is over 250 miles south of these locations, it is not hard to imagine that Texas will get a 15-20 foot storm surge, even if Ike does not strengthen.“

Out and about this morning, and I picked up some last-minute supplies. We’re now stocked up with about 50-60 gallons of gas, probably 30 gallons of water, plenty of food, first aid items, flashlights, batteries, a crank radio with weather band, and of course, the generator and portable a/c unit. We’re adding a spare car battery and a power inverter for emergency use while power is out during the storm. And of course, the boarding of the windows has started

That makes us probably among the best prepared households; certainly in the top 5-10%.

But I’m rather concerned that as of midday, I’ve seen only a couple of stores and two other houses start to board up. It’s like they think they can wait until tomorrow — unfortunately, due to Ike’s huge wind field, they can’t. As for the homes, well most won’t board up — as I said before, there isn’t enough lumber in all of Houston to board up all of Houston. It’s possible that most people are either still at work or trying to get what they need to board up. I don’t envy them the lines. (See pictures below the fold of some parking lots.)

But its the official evacuation orders that concern me. As I posted before, the Houston-Gavleston area is divided up into multiple zones, and they are supposed to be staggered. Well, if Ike were a typical Cat 2 hurricane, the Coastal and A zones are supposed to be evac’d. B is evac’d for a Cat 3, and C has to bail in a 4 or 5. So even if Ike is taken at face value as a category two, they should be pulling everyone out of zones Coastal and A.

They’re not…. exactly. Instead, mandatory evacuation has been called for Galveston Island, and the Bolivar peninsula, and the various small municipalities in northern Galveston county have also made their own calls. But I can’t find anything to indicate that the Galveston county authorities have even called for a voluntary evacuation of the unincorporated areas.

During a press conference at Houston TranStar, Judge Emmett added Pasadena ZIP code 77507 to the already announced mandatory evacuations list. Already on the evacuation list are people in ZIP codes: 77058, 77059, 77062, 77520, 77546, 77571, 77586 and 77598.

Here’s the map of the evacuation zones: (note, it is NOT complete at this time; many small municipalities in zone A have called evacs and I havent’ marked them yet for lack of time. Please refer to an appropriate media outlet for your evacuation news)

Notice what’s missing in Zone B? The upper end of the bay. A prediction of 15′-17′ storm surge is the given right now, and it could be worse. Why haven’t 77522 and 77523 been included? (77520 is, but I failed to mark it, FYI). These two are low, low low, and at the very end of the bay. They are at the far east end of Harris County; they’re partially covered by Baytown, but not entirely. Is Harris County deferring to Baytown? And does Baytown have these zips on their mind?

After the mess of Rita, the governor’s office stepped in and dictated that emergency planning and evacuation calls would be done on a regional basis. Local officials didn’t like that at all, and I also argued against it I feared that an Austin bureaucrat would know less about the local conditions than the local officials, and make bad calls. I’m now wondering if I was right to think that.

I’ll try to develop that thought more later, when I have some time.

I’m not seeing a lot of windows being boarded up yet. Folks could be at work or trying to get lumber.

Update: Brenden Loy says all of Zone A and B have been called for evac. I might have missed the additional zip codes, as I’ve been to busy to keep up. But I just haven’t been seeing the sense of urgency from the Harris County officials that I’d expect. I may change that opinion after I catch up on the news. I can’t say the same about the Houston NWS:

LIFE THREATENING INUNDATION LIKELY! ALL NEIGHBORHOODS…AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES…WILL BE INUNDATED DURING HIGH TIDE. PERSONS NOT HEEDING EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH. MANY RESIDENCES OF AVERAGE CONSTRUCTION DIRECTLY ON THE COAST WILL BE DESTROYED. WIDESPREAD AND DEVASTATING PERSONAL PROPERTY DAMAGE IS LIKELY ELSEWHERE. VEHICLES LEFT BEHIND WILL LIKELY BE SWEPT AWAY. NUMEROUS ROADS WILL BE SWAMPED…SOME MAY BE WASHED AWAY BY THE WATER. ENTIRE FLOOD PRONE COASTAL COMMUNITIES WILL BE CUTOFF. WATER LEVELS MAY EXCEED 9 FEET FOR MORE THAN A MILE INLAND. COASTAL RESIDENTS IN MULTI-STORY FACILITIES RISK BEING CUTOFF. CONDITIONS WILL BE WORSENED BY BATTERING WAVES. SUCH WAVES WILL EXACERBATE PROPERTY DAMAGE…WITH MASSIVE DESTRUCTION OF HOMES…INCLUDING THOSE OF BLOCK CONSTRUCTION.

Update 2: Ok, I missed the news conference a couple of hours ago, and the media was still playing catch-up on their websites. All of A and B are now under evac orders.

Update 3: I called it. In an e-mail discussion with Steven Den Beste last night, I noted:

I mean, if there’s an emergency, any drivers that live in the area are going to want to stay with their families and take care of them. So absenteeism skyrockets. I don’t really expect better here. (The last day before Rita, almost all of the TSA personnel failed to report to work at IAH.)

Granted this is only 2 buses… that we know of.

And in the last 20 minutes, it has clouded up and is acting like it wants to rain. (see note on the last picture below the fold.)

And now, back to the pictures.
(more…)

Evacuation called for parts of Harris County zones A and B.

The Chronicle is tracking all evac calls here, but hasn’t updated with that one yet (since 8:30 last night in fact).
KHOU has school closings here.
Harris County, Missouri City closed tomorrow. Nothing said about the city of Houston yet though. City of Houston closed tomorrow.

Washington Mutual (bank) is closed tomorrow.

From the Chron:

“Those who stay here and don’t voluntarily evacuate, we are asking to stay at home,” Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. “We don’t want to evacuate the island, that’s the last thing we would want to do.”

Officials had been criticized for ordering a mandatory evacuation when Hurricane Rita sideswiped Galveston in 2005 and were determined not to order an evacuation this year unless it was necessary.

This is seriously worrying me. Because of the cluster-fuck that Rita’s evac turned into, too many officials may be gun shy. Add to that, Ike has an unusually low wind speed for such a powerful hurricane, and we could be setting up for a hell of a sucker punch, if Ike suddenly tightens up and makes it to the Cat 4 strength that its barometric pressure indicates.

Ok, after watching Berger’s chat for two days running, let me put your evacuation decision in simple, easy to understand terms:

IF YOU DON’T LIVE EAST OF 288 AND SOUTH OF HWY 90 EAST, SIT THE FUCK DOWN!!!

Edit: See the link to the evacuation map below.

Your getting on the road is only going to make it impossible for the people who NEED to evacuate. Let me give you a simple statistic: Rita killed 7 people. The evacuation killed 50+! (Total indirect deaths for Rita = 120, including the 23 that died in the bus fire on I-45). Simply put, in one incident, the evacuation killed 3x the people that Rita did. And there’s no exact count (that I’ve found) but another 3-5x died in other incidents (Such as elderly parents dying in the heat after the family ran out of gas in 200-mile long traffic jams).

So if you evac unnecessarily, you’re placing yourself in danger, and you’re adding to the danger of everyone around you. Therefore let me repeat:

Sit. The. Fuck. Down. Gas up the vehicle, and don’t go.

The only reasons to evacuate is that you are in a surge zone, your home will come apart in a 100 mile-an-hour wind, or you live in a low-lying area that will flood over waist knee* high in your home from 5-10 inches of rain. Basically, if your home was built in the mid 80’s or later, you’ll withstand the wind. Might lose a few windows; board up if you can; do the ones on the south and east sides if that’s all you have wood for. Frankly, there isn’t enough lumber in all of Houston to board, well, all of Houston. (This is why we keep pre-cut pieces in our garage. They’re in the damn way all the time, but it’s worth it.) Don’t forget, there will be shelters in the city; you don’t have to move to Canada to avoid Ike. You can always get to know a few hundred of your neighbors to pass the time.

Water up. One gallon per day, per person minimum for drinking. You’ll need more if you plan on amenities like bathing and brushing teeth; you can fill the tub, sinks, pots, pans, etc. If we take a major hit, the water plants on the Ship Channel and San Jac River will be knocked out for days. (Note: Rita also damaged the Lake Livingston dam, necessitating emergency repairs. If it had failed, Bad Things would have happened to the city’s water supply.) And remember, if electricity is out, so is your A/C — you’ll need that water.

Afterwards, if your home is unlivable, then you can pack and get out, once the water goes down and the roads are cleared.

And if Ike stays well to the south of here, there’s no point in doing even that much.

Trusting forcasts
Houston Chronicle’s Preparation Guide
Damage by Category (note, because of the funneling effect of the bay, raise the surge estimate by one category if the hurricane passes anywhere over Freeport or the lower half of Galveston island.)
Evacuation Map
Should I stay or should I go?
Pets! (Gotta love the idiot in Eric’s chat who whined he didn’t want to bring his dog inside because of the carpet, and wanted to know if it would be safe to tie him to a tree in a 100 mph wind…you know, he had to be trolling.)
Flood plains?

Fun read: the “surprise hurricane” of 1943

*Waist was a bit much. Especially if you have small children! Anything under 8-10, I’d seriously consider evac’ing to a shelter.

The tracks from Ike are beginning to take a severe and pronounced rightward hook. From the 5 p.m. Eastern discussion:

THERE HAS BEEN A SIGNIFICANT NARROWING IN THE SPREAD OF THE
LATEST MODEL RUNS…WITH THE GFS…GFDL…AND NOGAPS ALL SHOWING
LESS RIDGING TO THE NORTH OF IKE LATE IN THE PERIOD AND SHIFTING
THEIR TRACKS NORTHWARD TO BE IN BETTER AGREEMENT WITH THE UKMET AND
ECMWF RUNS. IKE IS NOW EXPECTED TO RECURVE AROUND THE PERIPHERY OF
THE SUBTROPICAL RIDGE NEAR THE END OF THE FORECAST PERIOD. THE
OFFICIAL FORECAST IS ADJUSTED NORTHWARD ON DAYS FOUR AND FIVE…BUT
ALL OF THE BETTER DYNAMICAL MODELS ARE EVEN FARTHER TO THE RIGHT.

In other words, the better models are putting Ike right in our “danger basket” of Freeport to High Island. Worse case scenario is crossing either Freeport or the western end of Galveston island. That would push a storm surge of around 19 feet (for a Cat 3) into the bay, flooding significant areas of La Marque, Kemah, Clear Lake, Pasadena, Baytown, lower Channelview, etc.

I am really concerned about the hurricane hype; apparently KHOU and KTRK are up to their usual “panic the rubes” stuff. The problem is they always panic the wrong people — Folks in Kingwood and the Woodlands are hyperventilating and showing up in Eric Berger’s chats, wanting to know if they should evacuate tomorrow.

Not just “no” but HELL NO. If these people get on the roads (again) then people in the areas that really need to be evac’d are going to be screwed. Let me point out that aside from Clear Lake, which is relatively upscale, a lot of the threatened area is occupied by people of (being generous here) extremely modest means. Taking off from work and evacuating is a signficant financial burden to these people. Add another reason for them to stay home, and we’ve got a setup for hundreds dead if we get, God forbid, a Cat 3 crossing the southern end of Galveston Island. A Cat 4 would be frightening. Eric wrote three years ago:

Houston’s perfect storm would feed on late summer’s warm waters as it barreled northward across the Gulf of Mexico, slamming into the coast near Freeport.

A landfall here would allow its powerful upper-right quadrant, where the waves move in the same direction as the storm, to overflow Galveston Bay. Within an hour or two, a storm surge, topping out at 20 feet or more, would flood the homes of 600,000 people in Harris County

And at least one of the higher-accuracy models are bringing Ike ashore within 50 miles of that point, based on the current prediction. I’m not even going to think about a Cat 5.

Let’s be realistic, shall we? People are contrary and stubborn. The more the media runs around sounding like Chicken Little, the more some people will dig in and resist. That’s one reason why I was upset about the fuss over Edouard, which wasn’t a hell of a lot more than a glorified thunderstorm when it came ashore. (A very wet one, to be sure.) And the more hysterical the media gets, the less anyone listens to them.

As I said at the link, it’s tremendously disruptive to shut the city down; you cannot do that every little tropical storm or Cat 1 hurricane out there. It’s not like we’re below sea level, like some other cities I could name. Now we’ve got the Real Deal about to bear down on us, and too many people I talk to are rolling their eyes. This is the storm people need to be watching carefully.

I doubt my criticism had anything to do with it, but after the Edouard mess, Eric Berger seems to have settled down and is taking a hard-headed, no-nonesense attitude towards Ike. He’s definitely regained my respect, and upped it some besides, for his tireless work. (Ok, I admit it, I probably overstated the case against him during Edouard, from sheer disgust at all the hype. I apologize, Eric.)

KHOU: Seven stories on their front page related to Ike.
KPRC: only two.
KTRK: Six stories.

At least nobody, not even Joe Bastardi is asking why we haven’t evac’d Houston yet. I guess there are some limits.

Edit: and just for the record, it would be extremely hard for me to repeat this event.

Edit 2: And lest anyone forget what the Rita evac was like, read this and this. It might remind folks why I’m a little upset over hype.

Eric’s hosting live chats every day at 2pm local time this week. There’s some good information in them (and after his early alarmism on Edouard, he’s doing a good job of playing the information straight), but the signal to noise ratio is getting out of whack as today’s winds down.

3:08 [Comment From Colleen]
Will the government be paying for our evacuation?

3:08 Eric Berger: Nope.

Thank you Eric. And I commend your restraint, since my response would have been “Don’t you mean will YOU be paying for my evacuation?” Just a reminder folks; the government doesn’t have its own money, it only has what it took from you and me.

In any case, I’ve been getting a bad feeling about Ike for several days now. May be nerves, but I’m going to lay in a few more batteries. And some gas.

So, James Taranto wrote in the WSJ’s Best of the Web that…

TNR’s John Judis tracked down Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 “hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago’s South Side.” Kellman describes a conversation the two “community organizers” had at a conference on “social justice” in October 1987:

“[Obama] wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable income,” Kellman recalls.

But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him “to make major changes in poverty or discrimination.” To do that, he said, “you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials.” In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. . . .

And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school.

I don’t have any issues with the above — with the exception that Obama believes that politicians and people manipulating politicians can make major changes to poverty. Look, the only thing that can make a major change to poverty is raising someone’s income. How do you do that? Well not by the tried-and-true political method of removing someone else (a productive, tax-paying citizen) and just giving it to the person in poverty. Now all you’ve done is penalized the hard working taxpayer and removed the incentive for the person in poverty to try and raise their income on their own. But that’s what politicians do. What about “community organizers?”

(more…)

Oh hell yeah! From the comments:

Though I loved the comment about styrofoam columns, my favorite of the night was actually her comment that being a mayor is a bit like a community organizer, except with actual responsibility. It was particularly devastating coming right after Rudy’s speech.

“The Presidency is not supposed to be a voyage of personal discovery.”

Then there’s this beaut, also from the comments: “What’s the difference between a soccer mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”

I mean, damn!

So, ah, where are the “f**king baloons” going to be, and are they going to drop like they’re supposed to, this time?

Natonal Hurricane Center update here.

Basically, the wind is beginning to pick up, and the course has changed slightly northwards. Pressure has dropped to 999mb and maximum sustained winds are 60mph; the storm is moving at 8mph. The rainfall predictions for Texas have been increased to 4-6 inches with up to 10 inches locally. The discussion notes that there are several factors against further growth, but there are also convective bursts occurring at times on the south side of the storm. Overall, they’re assigning less than a 10% chance that it will make hurricane status. But if my memory serves me correctly, at this point, Allison was expected to drop only 6-9 inches of rain, with a max of 15 inches locally.

THE INTENSITY FORECAST IS SOMEWHAT PROBLEMATIC. THE SHEAR…
POSSIBLE DRY AIR…AND RELATIVE LACK OF CONVECTIVE ORGANIZATION
ARGUE AGAINST RAPID STRENGTHENING BEFORE LANDFALL. HOWEVER…THE
CONVECTIVE BURSTS HAVE BEEN STRONG ENOUGH TO CAUSE SOME
STRENGTHENING…AND THE SHEAR IS FORECAST TO DIMINISH BEFORE
LANDFALL. NONE OF THE INTENSITY GUIDANCE NOW CALLS FOR EDOUARD TO
BECOME A HURRICANE BEFORE LANDFALL…SO THE INTENSITY FORECAST WILL
CONTINUE TO CALL FOR LANDFALL AS A 55-60 KT TROPICAL STORM.
HOWEVER…THERE IS STILL A CHANCE THE STORM COULD BECOME A
HURRICANE BEFORE LANDFALL. IT’S IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT THERE
IS VERY LITTLE PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A VERY STRONG TROPICAL
STORM AND A LOW-END HURRICANE. AFTER LANDFALL…EDOUARD SHOULD
WEAKEN AND EVENTUALLY DISSIPATE OVER CENTRAL TEXAS.

Conventional wisdom always says that the storms will turn north and east. Much of the panic buying is from people who know that conventional wisdom is worth exactly nothing when you’re suffering from a flooded house, 95 degree heat, 70% humidity, and obviously, no power. And hell, all the bought water will keep…but what are we going to do with 30 gallons of gas, if the storm doesn’t hit?

1 AM update: Now the NWS has dropped the max wind prediction to 65 mph, and indicates that a more northward track is likely, although it might not fully take hold until after landfall.

Lookie here: More hype.

Just recieved:

To Employees:

The City of Houston has begun preparations for Tropical Storm Edouard, which is expected to arrive along the Texas Coast during the early morning hours of Tuesday August 5th. Due to the expected intensity and nature of the storm, Mayor Bill White has determined that some non-emergency city services will be suspended.

Mayor Bill White directs that *only* those employees designated as “essential personnel” report for business on Tuesday August 5.

All City of Houston employees should monitor media (local radio and television) and follow departmental communications plans to determine when to report to work.

We will continue to monitor conditions throughout the day and night and expect to have further updates as warranted.

Meanwhile, supervisors are encouraged to review the City’s Administrative Procedures 2-3, pertaining to Severe Weather and other Emergency Conditions.

Employees should check with their supervisors to confirm their designation as “essential personnel” and “non-essential personnel.”

Bill White,
Mayor

So it looks like the Mayor’s decided that discretion is the better part of common sense, and will side with Brendan. Given his (Brendan’s) point about setting the tone for other employers, I suppose it’s the right decision but damn, Wednesday is going to suck, and the public is going to be down on us… especially if they work for employers that insisted they show up.

Can’t win for losing.

Update: Oh, for crying out loud. This is EXACTLY the sort of thing I am talking about when I say hype. Is Monica pulling my leg? Consensus is, yes. Edit: and on second reading, I agree. Nice satire. But show that to 1000 people, and at least one will go, “Well, I better leave too!”

Update: Heh. So much for not in the cards. Can I retroactively change that to “Not in the cards 24 hours before a wobbly tropical storm hits Houston . . . maybe?” But guys, on this blog, I’m part Emperor Darth Misha, and I carried it over to my comments on Brendan’s site. if you really want to see me go off on someone for hyping, look here. And read the message after. (Edit: quoting here:)

This sums it all up to me:
Galveston Not Evacuating

If they are not evacuating Galveston Island how serious can the storm be????
Yes use some “ common sense “ but as I wrote before, people up here in Spring have emptied the store shelves of water and we are at least 60 miles north of Galveston Island, crazy??

The small arrow is Galveston, the large one is Spring. For scale, the I-610 loop is elven miles across, east to west.

Well, slightly stronger, but no faster winds. Still, Edouardo is better organized and primed to strengthen overnight. And I still think that folks should stay home if they can, but if you have to go to work, use caution. Remember that gusts which might move your car a few inches will push a big 54-foot trailer clear across your lane. Give those guys plenty of room. And for crying out loud, DON’T drive through an underpass! What looks like a few inches of water is probably several feet.

And just because the car ahead of you made it doesn’t mean you will, especially when someone in a big pickup blows past you throwing waves a foot higher than the rest of the water. Cars aren’t amphibious and neither are you.

No further word from the Mayor yet.

Me? Well, I’m holding up under the furball I started. Oh, wait, nobody cared. Well, I did start it after all, so I’ll deal with it.

Well I seem to have gotten involved in a three way discussion with Eric Berger (by proxy) and Brenden Loy over whether it’s a good idea to stay home tomorrow, and whether Mayor White should have already declared that the city will be open. The mayor’s comments that I quoted earlier are from an email sent to city employees, which I will quote here in full:

(Edit: Thought I had only quoted part earlier, but I see I had quoted it in full. )

The City of Houston has begun preparations for the possible arrival of Tropical Storm Edouard, expected sometime tomorrow along the upper Texas coast.

It is important to note that the City is open for business as usual both today and tomorrow. All employees are expected to remain at their jobs today and report to work as usual tomorrow.

We will continue to monitor conditions throughout the day and night and expect to have a further update shortly after 4:30 p.m. today.

Meanwhile, supervisors are encouraged to review the City’s Administrative Procedures 2-3, pertaining to Severe Weather and other Emergency Conditions.

Employees should check with their supervisors to confirm their designation as “essential personnel” and “non-essential personnel.”

Bill White,
Mayor

I should also note that my Department, Public Works and Engineering, has an emergency line that employees can dial for information regarding reporting to work or other necessary facts. They even passed stickers out to put on our name badges, so we’ll always have it. Our emergency policies (put into place after Rita) allow for rotating employees off duty a couple of days in advance to make preparations, and we’re placed in Tiers according to how necessary we are to the city. Police, fire, and many essential public works employees are all Tier 1 and must be on the job.

Shutting the city down is no small effort; it is hugely disruptive; if the government stops, so do a lot of services that the public expects to be there. Given that this storm has virtually no chance to develop beyond minimal Cat 1, a decision 24 hours in advance is not unreasonable, and the Mayor’s left himself an out for this afternoon. It’s a good call, just to make sure some folks don’t start planing a holiday. Bill White is far more reasonable that some prior mayors in this regard. Lanier and Brown were die hard “you will come to work if it snows” types. I am not kidding. I had to drive to work on a day that all the freeways were closed due to icing, and HPD lost count of the accident reports around 1500 or so.

I’d be more interested in knowing what the Post Office is doing — if they’re pulling their horns in, then the weather is serious.

As I said in the comments on your blogWeather Nerd, I don’t see using the statements of emergency managers as a hard and fast guideline. They’re going to be conservative because they (rightly) don’t want to risk their people hauling damn fools out of situations they shouldn’t have gotten into. That’s not a rationale for people being stupid however.

I’m arguing against a blanket rule of “everyone stay home, OMG the world’s gonna end if you don’t!” I’m not saying, “go party in the rain!” The wind and rain will be ramping up at the beginning of the morning rush, and dropping off at the beginning of the afternoon rush; both will be a complete mess, and I actually expect 1-3 deaths from this, because someone’s going to exercise poor judgment, like driving into a flooded underpass at 50mph. (Something that doesn’t require even a tropical depression to kill, around here.)

If anyone can stay home tomorrow, they probably should. If they have to go to work, they need to get to work very early. And stay late. If their normal schedule puts them on the road during the mid-day, then hell no, stay home.

But shut the whole city down? Not in the cards. At the most, tell everyone “We plan to be open, but check the morning news and weather.” Just in case Edouard decides to enter the record books by becoming the fastest forming cat 3 in history, or something.

Update: Jury calls have been canceled by Harris County, the gulf oil/gas platforms are shutting down (correction: no they aren’t, the storm was too fast), no more tankers incoming and many area colleges will be closed tomorrow. These are appropriate measures.

Update 2: Everyone lay off Brendan. I’m the one that took the potshot at Eric. Now maybe that was a bit too harsh, but I have never been one to avoid harsh when I think someone’s being dumb. I’ve still got a grudge against the mess the press made of everything ahead of Rita. The TV stations were worse than the Chron, but that’s not to say the newspaper didn’t do a lot to feed the general panic. A few cautions in there to slow down the extra 1.5 million that evacuated might have helped a lot. Yeah, I’m taking it out on Eric, maybe more than he deserves, but he works for what could, at best, be described as a lackluster newspaper that ignores critical local stories while pushing a narrow, leftist political agenda.

And whomever hinted I’m backing the Mayor because I’m a city employee obviously never read this blog. I’ve been known to back Mayor White once or twice. When he was right.

Not that I’ll turn down any bonus points for doing so, you understand….

Well, the National Hurricane Center moved the track back south a bit now, raised the chance of it being a hurricane slightly, and the storm has sped up. Next major update is 10 am CDT.

10 AM Update : It looks very much like the forecast is solidifying around a high-end tropical storm. Maximum winds have actually dropped to 45mph and the pressure has remained steady. High level winds blew the top off overnight, but it is expected to reform and strengthen later today and tonight. The track is moving a bit south again, which means Galveston Bay would take a direct hit from the right front quadrant (the strongest) if Edouard follows a perfect centerline track. Expected rainfall is in the area of eight inches, locally higher. Localized flooding will result from that, but not any city-wide disasters.

1 PM Update: Only a position update, other information remains the same. Outer rain bands hitting Louisiana; 3 to 5 inches of rain expected there. Pressure’s edged down to 1001 mb.

Some links y0u might want:
Chron’s Sci Guy
Weather Nerd
Weather.com for Houston
Weather Underground

However, I beg to differ with SciGuy on one issue:

What does this mean? The winds should cause little structural damage, but they will be strong enough such that only emergency vehicles should be on the road. I would expect most non-emergency businesses in Harris County to be closed on Tuesday.

Bill White obviously disagrees, and I think he’s right:

The City of Houston has begun preparations for the possible arrival of Tropical Storm Edouard, expected sometime tomorrow along the upper Texas coast.

It is important to note that the City is open for business as usual both today and tomorrow. All employees are expected to remain at their jobs today and report to work as usual tomorrow.

We will continue to monitor conditions throughout the day and night and expect to have a further update shortly after 4:30 p.m. today.

Meanwhile, supervisors are encouraged to review the City’s Administrative Procedures 2-3, pertaining to Severe Weather and other Emergency Conditions.

Employees should check with their supervisors to confirm their designation as “essential personnel” and “non-essential personnel.”

Bill White,
Mayor

This is a minimal storm that may not even make hurricane status, and to call for business closures and all non-official traffic to stay off the streets is nothing but over-hype on the part of the press.