Late Morning Reports About Ike

* At 10:45 this morning, doppler radar shows that the center of Ike was almost halfway up the extreme east side of Texas headed in the general direction of Texarkana. Still producing very high winds and extremely heavy rain. Lufkin, in East Texas, was reporting gusts to 48.

* Houston Mayor, Bill White, advises that thousands of Houston city employees already looking at the area to help any way they can. However, they still have to be extremely careful because of downed power lines, flooding and still some very strong winds.

* Unfortunately, hourly weather reports from Houston’s two main airports have not been available for hours.

* 10 miles south of New Iberia, Louisiana, the Coast Guard reports that a pontoon barge was sunk near Louisiana State Route 83.

* Tornado Watch continues until 7:00 this evening for all of Louisiana except the southeast part. The New Orleans area is not included. The Tornado Watch also includes the entire eastern edge of Texas, including Houston and Galveston.

* Reports from Galveston Island are very sketchy so far, but apparently there is considerable structural damage on one part of the island. As soon as weather conditions calm down some more, the U. S. Coast Guard is going to bring in helicopters for search and rescue efforts. Some estimates last night indicated that at least 10,000 people failed to leave Galveston. It is uncertain of the fate of some of those.

* Virtually all of metropolitan Houston is without power. Some exceptions were the downtwon commercial establishments where the power lines were underground.

* All Houston hospitals operating on emergency generators.

* Exceptionally heavy rain will continue in the Houston/Galveston area for a time and as much as 8 inches of additional rain is possible northward through extreme North Texas and about 6 inches is expected through Western Arkansas during the next 24 hours and as much as 4 inches in SW Missouri.

* North winds will be increasing today, even in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. The wind will be out of the north because they will be on the west side of Ike’s circulation. They could get gusts as high as 60 mph. They have a Tropical Storm Inland Wind Warning until midnight and a Flash Flood Watch all the way through Sunday.

* Reports late last night indicated that numerous SW Louisiana communities were flooded somewhat like Hurricane Rita.

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