When Beer Runs Go Bad

Just kidding.

But this woman picked a bad time to go driving in the ocean. This is the first rescue for Hurricane Ike.


Some internet friends have asks how things are for me in Texas right now. I'm in the Dallas area, so all we're seeing at the moment are overcast skies and some gusting winds. We're in the storm path and the reporters are saying that the storm may still have the strength of a tropical storm, by the time it reaches us.

We're on the edge the Great Plains here, so we see some dramatic thunderstorms already. I've been narrowly missed by a few dramatic tornadoes in the past. The Mesquite tornado of 1984, came right down the street I was living on and turned right, just a few houses up from me. My drive home was through the path of destruction. A roommate at the time, that was riding with me, was from Iowa. He kept repeating the mantra, "Oh my God, I'm moving back to Iowa. Oh my God...". The destruction continued for miles and we didn't expect to find a house standing at the end of our journey. Chris gave notice and moved back home to Iowa.

In 1985, I had moved across town, and lived just a few miles from the airport when flight 191 went down in a storm, due to wind shear.

We've had a few storms this year, but nothing dramatic so far. My biggest concern is damage from broken trees and flooding. We sometimes get heavy hail in these storms.

Our house has a concrete drainage ditch behind it. When we first moved in, it would flood up past the easement a few feet into our backyard. Since then, a bridge down stream has been widened and we haven't seen flooding like that since. A few times I went down to see the bridge during the flood and a wall of water would arc over it like a tube in a wave you might surf in. It was a pretty amazing sight, and a bit scary.

If anything interesting happens around my house over the weekend, I'll see if i can capture it on film and share it.