The Houston Chronicle has the most complete look at the stories surrounding the effects of the storm, but a couple of people noted special places that are gone.

Suzie at Echidne of the Snakes notes that the Balinese Room, Galveston nightclub that was located on pilings over the water has been destroyed, and Cookie Jill was affected by the loss of Brennan’s, a well-regarded Houston restaurant that was lost to a fire caused by the hurricane.

Anyone who stayed on the western end of Galveston island has to be presumed dead, because there is only debris left.  Houses were ripped off of their pilings, and many are now out in the water.  People have no real concept of the power of the storm surge.

Have a look at what the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan did to the Interstate 10 bridge between Santa Rosa and Escambia counties West of me. That was a fairly new bridge, but the reinforced concrete decking was pushed off the supports.

Update: Hipparchia has more pictures of the bridge.

While everyone was watching the Gulf Coast, CNN tells us that Chicago is dealing with flooding:

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) — Chicago authorities asked Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to issue a disaster declaration after rainfall Saturday in the Windy City broke a single-day record that had stood for more than two decades.

The deluge flooded streets and stranded residents in their homes. Officials worked to rescue people Sunday as the city grappled with another day of drenching.

O’Hare International Airport recorded 6.64 inches of rain Saturday — breaking the all-time record of 6.49 inches set in 1987, according to the National Weather Service. Records have been kept since 1871.
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[Read more →]

There were two things going on that made this site and Steve Bates’s place difficult to reach this morning:

1. My host is reblocking IP addresses to make operations more efficient and expand some of their capabilities, and;
2. The host is under a distributed denial of service [DDOS] attack probably from Romania, that began at 2:30AM CDT, but is getting worse. The attack is using large blocks of addresses, so a lot of people are being turned away automatically.

They seem to have a handle on the DDOS attack, although we’re now behind a firewall blocking most of Romania.

In addition, Sitemeter is updating this weekend, so that could hang up loading from time to time.

Steve, doesn’t know any of this because he’s dealing IWS [Internet Withdrawal Syndrome] due to the loss of power.

On the Hurricane Front – for the first time since August 15 there are no named storms in the Atlantic Basin. It looks like things are quieting down for a week or so.

As I mentioned before in A Potential New Record, if Ike made a landfall in the the US, it would set a new record.

Dolly [Category 2], Edouard [Tropical Storm], Fay [Tropical Storm], Gustav [Category 2], Hanna [Category 1], and Ike [Category 2] – six consecutively named storms hitting the US in a single year.

This is the third time in the Hedgemony’s reign that at least five in a row has occurred, [2002, 2004, and 2008].

The disturbing news, politically speaking, is it didn’t happen in the election year that saw Democratic Party gains. Good thing people don’t believe in omens and such.