Ridding Out a Hurricane

As I already mentioned we just moved to Texas in July, we had no experience with Hurricanes.

July and August we had several warnings but nothing developed so the last week of August I decided I was tired of all the plywood taking up space in the garage and had the bright idea of moving them all to the attic (the plywood is used to protect the windows and we have a lot of windows) it took half a day to haul them all up there.

Yep you guessed it, the very next weekend Ike struck, Friday I was hauling them all back down to install them on the windows. That was a lot of work and I hope I never need to do that again. They now stay in the garage.

A lot of people we know evacuated but we decided to ride it out, the house is well made and should not have any problems.

All day we watched as the clouds thickened and the winds started to pick up, Ike is on a direct path for us.

Everything was kinda fun then exciting, I don't think we ever got scared. It was about 10 pm and we lost power. The winds were blowing really good by then but all is still fine, the boards are holding ( I thought that through also and only put up half, the side of the house the storm was approaching)

OK as I said already I had no experience with this and didn't think things through as well as I thought. The winds of a hurricane move in a circular pattern so they hit one way coming and the other leaving.

So now it's a 2 am and we are now on the back side of the hurricane, it's blowing the rain so hard it's hitting the back door under the patio and water is being forced past the seal and hitting the far wall of the entry, time to grab the towels. OK now I know to put up all the boards!

The next morning the sun is out, the winds are down, I think it's safe to go out and inspect the property fully expecting to see a lot of damage. To our surprise we found none.

The next day we had our power back on, again lucky. we drove around two days after and found total devastation all around us, most of the properties around us had damage, roofs missing, trees and fences blown over. we even saw one mobile home totally destroyed and a house blown over. People we know had still been without power three weeks later.

I would never recommend to anyone to ride out a category 3 hurricane, Would I do it again? probably but I've never been known for my brains.