Hurricane Ike, Day One

I consider Friday, September 12th, day one. My last picture I took that day was around 2:00 pm. We set up "camp" in the playroom and were glued to the TV reports as the storm Here is Avery all snuggled up for the night.

By the looks of Brenna, you would never know a Category 2 hurricane was coming our way.

Tony and the kids went to sleep around 9:00 pm. I would say things got scary after 10:00 pm. I stayed in the living room to watch the progress of the storm. Since it was so big, we were expected to get Tropical Storm force winds around 11:00 pm, but landfall was not expected for another 3 hours. There were a couple of times that I left the living room, which is not protected by a second story, because the wind was gusting so hard. I never heard the whistling sound many people say you hear, I think due to the trees breaking the wind. No, the trees were not "breaking wind"! Sometimes I wonder about you people! Now back to the story.

After doing some thinking and realizing that I might not get much sleep over the next few days, I decided to go to bed. My bed consisted of Cooper and I on his twin mattress on the playroom floor. The gusting wind would wake me up on occasion, but strangely, I was actually able to get a few hours of sleep. Tony and I woke up around 3:30 am on Saturday during the worst part of the wind. For some reason, Tony had to go to the garage around this time. That's when he was able to witness a huge limb fall from our large oak tree in the back yard. I made him come inside immediately!

We continued to watch TV reports as the storm came ashore. At this time, the eye had made landfall and was pushing our way. The prediction was that the eye would track west of I-45 and follow the Interstate up through to Dallas. With this prediction, we expected to have winds from the north at first and then winds from the south. We now know that the storm tracked east of I-45, therefore, we only received winds from the south and were spared the "dirty" side of the storm. From what I could get from the reports after the storm, our area experienced wind gusts around 80 mph.

At 4:30 am, as we were watching the reports on the storm on the TV in the kitchen, the power went out. It was radio from then on. Tony has a radio that picks up the television stations and we were able to get local news reports throughout the morning. Once the sun came up and the winds settled down, we were able to get a few pictures of the damage.

I stuck my arm out of the back door to get this shot. You can see the top of a pine tree upside down in the driveway. There will be more pictures of that to come.
This is a picture of the front yard. It's hard to see most of the debris because it blends in with the grass. Most of the sidewalk is covered in small limbs and twigs.

The kids woke up around the time the power went out. They were curious about what was going on outside, but could not see. After they realized the worst was over, we were all able to go back to sleep for a few more hours.