What is it like inside a home near the coast under assault from 100 mph hurricane winds in the wee hours? You don’t usually run your generator right away while the storm’s still blowing hard, assuming you even have one. So it’s pitch dark, the power is out, windows are boarded. You have no internet, no cell phone, no refrigerator or AC, the landline is deader than a doornail. A battery powered radio or TV is your only point of contact with the outside world, and since it’s wall to wall hurricane coverage on the one or two shitty channels you can barely see on the tiny black and white screen through the snowy static, it’s not a hell of a lot of comfort. You conserve your batteries, sit mostly in the dank dark, and listen: It’s loud. Wind screams in pulses to a chorus of driving rain rising and falling from whisper to piercing hiss, there’s a constant hailstone pitter-patter of debris, punctuated by frequent ringing bangs when larger chunks smack into the sides and roof. If there are stands of trees nearby, you can hear them thrashing violently. Every now and then a sharp crack will signal a snapping trunk or large branch.

In the dim beam of a flashlight or flickering light of a candle, you can see the walls and ceiling flexing with each mighty gust, at times it’s almost as if the interior of the house breathes, rafters and beams groan and complain under the shifting strain. Pets cower and leap into your lap. You worry that the roof has been holed somewhere. You worry that even a small breach will open wider and allow the wind purchase against the underside. You worry the roof will peel off your house like a freaking can of sardines. It goes on for hours and hours, it goes on regardless if you are mentally and physically worn out, it goes on as you doze off for jagged, stormy catnaps.

I imagine hundreds of thousands of people are experiencing something like that right now. In a Cat 1 or 2 windfield, at a safe elevation, barring a tornado or large crashing tree, even an older wood frame home is likely to hold together well enough to provide critical shelter from the elements. But among those riding out Ike are reportedly thousands who chose to remain behind in the most vulnerable, low laying regions.

There are reports of widespread flooding and fierce but isolated fires on Galveston. There is a disturbing lack of news coming from the east and west ends of the island, and extending through Gilchrest, High Island, and up to Sabine Pass. But I know of no reports of serious injury or fatality at this time (I’m sad to report that there uncomfirmed, tentative reports of fatalities – DS 7:45AM). Since reporters on Galveston Island, as well as some near Beaumont and Port Arthur, are still able to broadcast their segments, we have good reason to hope that each and every one of the folks hunkering down in the hardest hit areas are OK. It is our deepest wish that the only epic stories that will emerge over the days ahead are the kind involving property damage, passed down to grandkids for decades to come, by those who successfully rode out Hurricane Ike through a dark, howling Texas night.

The experience I had with Andrew was not pleasant. And I am not a wimp. I’ve done my fair share of pretty extreme hiking and camping. Weather, or Mother Natural in general usually doesn’t concern me a whole lot. But a hurricane is different. Far different. I sure hope as the media reports start to come out of Texas and Louisiana later this morning and into the afternoon people that stayed behind just had a shitty experience and didn’t lose their lives.

A catastrophic hurricane is closing in on the fourth largest metro area in the US. The center of Ike is now within 50 miles of the coast. The storm is moving at 10 to 15 mph. Because of the population density and the forward motion of the storm, tiny variations in the track between now and landfall will make an enormous difference in terms of damage. Residents just east of the eye wall are looking straight down the barrel at full throated Category 3 to 4 winds; 120 to 130 mph sustained, gusts could top 150. Hurricane force winds are in effect over one hundred miles away from the storm’s center.

But the story of Ike will be stamped into the geological record by what looks to be a record or near record storm surge. East of the eye, sea levels may rise 20 feet or more above normal. Whipped by winds out of the east, water could rush inland for a mile or more from Galveston Bay, into communities southeast of Houston. The bay coastline from Texas City through Seabrook and La Porte are at extreme surge and flood risk. Large battering waves, perhaps as high as 25 feet in some spots, will race across the top of that turbulent, elevated ocean surface. There are reports that sections of Galveston Island and Port Arthur are now flooded and the water continues to rise. Conditions to the west of the eye are predicted to be roughly half to two-thirds as bad.

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The loss of even a single life is incalculable. But the wind damage from a Cat 3 hurricane, when distributed over an enormous, densely populated area, may well add up to tens of billions of dollars. The region being hardest hit is also home to some of the largest energy production, distribution, and refining facilities in the country. In short, hundreds could die, thousands of homes and smaller buildings might be wrecked, basic utilities will be out of commission for days or weeks, and already sky high fuel prices could soar nationwide.

A lot of the news reports I’ve seen are talking about Hurricane Ike as either a Cat 2 or 3 hurricane, but I think this is misleading. Instead it should be reported it as more like a tsunami 200 miles wide with hurricane force winds. According to Dr. Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog Ike is now stronger than Katrina and may strengthen more:

For example, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi as a strong Category 3 hurricane, yet its storm surge was more characteristic of a Category 5 storm. Dr. Powell came up with a new scale to rate potential storm surge damage based on IKE (not to be confused with Hurricane Ike!) The new scale ranges from 1-6. Katrina and Wilma at their peaks both earned a 5.1 on this scale (Figure 2). At 12:30pm EDT [Thurs], Ike earned a 5.2 on this scale, the second highest kinetic energy of any Atlantic storm in the past 40 years. Hurricane Isabel of 2003 had the highest.

Currently Hurricane Ike has a maximum sustained winds of 100+ mph with higher gusts. Ike is drawing energy from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and we expected to blow ashore early Saturday somewhere between Corpus Christi and Houston.

“Our citizens are weary and they’re tired and they have spent a lot of money evacuating … from Gustav,” he said. He added that if Ike were to threaten, “my expectations this time is, it will be very difficult to move the kind of numbers out of this city that we moved during Gustav”