I went out exploring a little after noon on a bike to see what the area situation was. It appears we are the only neighborhood in the immediate vicinity that has power. I saw a few CenterPoint energy crews out there working on various utility problems but it isn’t immediately clear why more of the area doesn’t have power.

The H.E.B. grocery store at SH 6 and Dulles Avenue is open but the fuel station there did not yet have any fuel. Most of the other businesses along that stretch of SH 6 were not yet open, but the news says the Kroger at SH 6 and Murphy was open.

I saw no working street lights or fuel stations with fuel during my trip. It looked like several of the fuel stations had power so chances are they will have some fuel within the next day.

I biked over to the north part of Oyster Creek Trail where it meets Lexington Boulevard and saw continued flooding in the park. The bridge over Oyster Creek on the north end of the trail was very much impassable.

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

While we have internet access now, I’m wondering the situation of Comcast’s cable network upstream. Their system may be on generators right now for all I know, so we could lose internet connectivity at any time.

There are way too many people out driving around aimlessly right now. While the roads in this area are open, there are still no fuel stations open nearby so it seems like a tremendous waste if people cannot safely resupply in the next few days.

Lori and I walked around our neighborhood and took some pictures of the damage. It is clear that we personally got very lucky – we have no damage at all, save a couple of tree branches that we’ve already cleaned up. Many other people in our neighborhood and surrounding ones have substantial damage from fallen trees on their homes, and many of the older fences and trees have been destroyed. There is debris everywhere. The good news is that, for the most part, the wind was not high enough in this part of town to destroy structure from wind alone. We saw no broken windows, a few torn gutters, and a handful of shingles, but that’s been it.

Some select pictures from our walk around the neighborhood:

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

From Hurricane Ike Aftermath

We’ve been without power for 3 hours now, but luckily the cellular data network is still alive.

The news reports that landfall for the center of the storm was just before 3. We’ve got another 8 hours or so of bad weather to sit out.

The plot of the book is actually quite good. A former government scientist focused on weather control returns to the subject once he has amassed a fortune in the private sector. He masters the ability to create and harness weather and begins to unleash the monster hurricane as a lesson to his arch-nemesis, the President of the United States. Meanwhile, scientists within the CIA begin to notice something might not be right about the weather…

Unfortunately a good thriller plot is coupled with some not so great writing. I’m pretty tolerant on writing styles but this one felt too much like someone had just read a book on “writing fiction in 21 days” or something along those lines. It had a tremendous quality of a “made for hollywood” movie that didn’t want you to think too hard.

Glad I read it, but I wouldn’t read it again. I’d give it 2.5 out of 5 stars.