1 Year Ago, Hurricane Ike Devastates Galveston
One year ago yesterday, residents of the Galveston area awoke to widespread destruction as Hurricane Ike tore inland. The storm would continue wreaking havoc inland with heavy rain and high winds, all the way through the Midwest and into Canada.
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The Category 2 hurricane's "Category 4 storm surge" was so large and widespread (affecting the entire Gulf Coast) that this year the National Hurricane Center has abandoned associating storm surges with classifications and is considering a new "Storm Surge Warning."
The storm killed 112 people in the United States and another 74 in Haiti and caused $24 billion in damages - the third most destructive U.S. hurricane (WIkiPedia). It knocked out power to 7.5 million from Texas to New England (me).
Three quarters of the structures in Galveston were destroyed by the storm (more facts on their website). Find out how the community is recovering one year later by reading this MSNBC article and viewing Galveston's Facebook Page and recovery website (which, just to give you an idea of how much is still be done, says that tree debris removal has been extended to March 2010!).
For this meteorologist, it was a "terrific" storm (and by that I mean both terrifying and scientifically interesting) and I was up all night watching a dozen news channels on television and tweeting the storm's greatest hits.
