Yikes! It's Ike!

Good Luck my fellow Texans.

I hope the flooding doesn’t get worse than what I had back in “06”. What a damn mess I had to deal with…



I had to toss just about everything in the basement into a dumpster.

Stay dry, guys.

Live chat about hurricane

Wind speeds continue to build around Galveston Bay mid-afternoon. Offshore platform ‘Auger’ still reports 105 mph sustained winds after 8 hours.

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Mike, how far offshore is Auger?

It appears to be approximately 150 miles SSE of Galveston based on its lat/log coordinates 27°33’0" N , 92°29’24" W .

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/images/stations/42361_mini.jpg

Most recent VIDEO of the flooding…and the hurricane didn’t even hit Texas yet.

Thanks Mike,

From the energy perspective…

Here is the latest update from Chuck Watson at KAC/UCF as of Sep 12 06z (02:00 EDT)
Current Situation: At 8am ET we are seeing 110 knot winds at the Shell Garden Banks platform - however, that is at 122m above the surface. Observations are normally standardized to 10m, so 95 knot surface winds are reasonable. Peak wave heights are in the 30-40 ft range across the entire GoM lease areas. These are within the range modern equipment can handle, however, as with Gustav, some of the older platforms with 35ft air gaps may have damage, but the newer deep water stuff should be OK. We will probably permanently lose 2-3% production as these older platforms will not be replaced. Overall, despite losing most of September production, by the end of October we should be back to 75%+ and offshore production should recover to 90-95% by the end of the year.
The key question is refinery damage. Storm surge flooding is definitely the big risk. If the storm center makes landfall on or north of Galveston, the peak surges will be north of the main refineries. In fact the latest WRF run puts the peaks over Port Arthur (attached). There is a lot of infrastructure out there. Current models are showing that there will be at least 1 MMBBL offline for 30 days, with the potential for 5 MMBBL offline at 30 days and 4 MMBBL at 60 days, 1 to 2 MMBBL out through the end of the year. That would certainly cause significant shortages of refined products (e.g., gasoline).
How likely are the really bad scenarios? I can’t emphasize enough that in these discussions, I am focused on the damage a storm is likely to do to key infrastructure. That is a very different perspective from the Hurricane Center or emergency managers. Their job is to keep people from harm. My job is to accurately forecast the impact of the storm on critical infrastructure. These are very different perspectives, and Ike illustrates our dilemmas almost perfectly. NHC and the emergency managers have to play up the risks or people will not evacuate. They never want to be wrong on the low side, so if there is any potential for intensification, they will plug that in to the forecast. Unfortunately, that plays on the fears in the oil/gas markets, and drives up prices unrealistically, so I spend a lot of time downplaying the NHC forecasts as they tend to be “hot” from a damage perspective. The risk is that someone will read my infrastructure forecasts and decide not to evacuate. That’s stupid; rigs and refineries can be replaced, lives cannot.
That said, my thinking is the storm will not be over 100 knots surface winds at landfall, and flooding will largely be confined to the coast, and inland wind damage to the refineries will not cause long term outages. That’s not great, but as noted yesterday 100 knots is when things start to get out of hand, and I think we will be below that threshold. To sum up, I think it’s a 1 in 5 at this point for the bad, long term refinery damage scenarios. It all depends on exactly where the intense winds end up, and we won’t know that until the storm is 6-12 hours out.
We will be posting periodic updates of track and damage forecasts here, because one never knows if one of these events will be seminal. We’re not hurricane experts at theoildrum.com. Thankfully we have an expert meteorologist who sends us track and damage forecasts relevant to oil and gas infrastructure. What we try to do on this site, (and have been doing for over 3 years), is articulate the fragility and urgency of our nation’s, and our world’s, energy situation. As Hurricane Ike moves nearer, and professional analysts gauge the impact it may have on our energy infrastructure, feel free to browse our archives of empirically based analyses and perspectives on the many aspects of our energy situation that form the backdrop not only for this hurricane, but for any exogenous event that disrupts the increasingly uneasy balance between energy supply and demand.

I’ve looked into my crystal ball Mike!

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VERY IMPRESSIVE! Let’s hope it’s accurate. Thanks for that update :smiley:

Kenton…‘Auger’ is the Shell Garden Banks platform referred to in that article.

Gottcha… thanks!

Now I see what you’ve been looking at…
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/maps/WestGulf.shtml

Auger is # 42361

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/images/maps/arrow_n.gif

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/images/maps/arrow_w.gif

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/images/maps/arrow_e.gif

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/images/maps/arrow_s.gifhttp://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/images/maps/arrow_se.gif
Stations with red label show “No Recent Reports”.
[RIGHT]Click border arrows to see adjacent maps. [/RIGHT]

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Yes, Auger is #42361. It should be noted that Auger has been reporting the same data since 1:00 pm CDT; it appears that the reporting station is down for now. You can also click on the box around Galveston Bay and get a close up of other reporting buoys. Those will be interesting later this evening, say around midnight.

OK, time to pucker up folks…

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Hi Guy’s,

looks like it’s going to be a rough one tonight, batten down the hatches and stay safe.

If you get the chance lets us know your all OK

Good luck :frowning:

Gerry

Winds are starting to pick up here.

Yeah, let’s see what they look like in a couple of hours. I’m more worried about the storm surge.

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We are hearing that as much as 40% of Galveston TX residence did not flee the storm.
The national weather service says any one left in Galveston faces “certain death” because
of the 9 foot wall of water (20 ft waves in some areas) known as the storm surge. The
population of Galveston (city only) is approx. 60K. That means 24,000, or more are at
risk, if I am hearing correctly. This hurricane is bringing a lot of sea water with it.

This is crazy.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080912-hurricane-ike.html

The storm surge is gonna be big. Up here the worry is tornadoes.

I think you are hearing correctly…the risk is staggering. Let’s hope & prey for the best. I can’t feel too sorry for the stupid schmuck’s that knowingly ignored the warnings…it’s the little one’s that have no choice but to do what DA dad thinks is best. That just really PO’s me. Everyone with families should be off the island by now, no excuses.