Humberto...what the ...who the???

[frawniemae]

Well folks...this one showed up not completely unannounced but most definitely with a bigger bang than was unexpected!The wind is gusting and rain is pouring and when I went to bed, Humberto was a tropical storm. Sometime before coming in pretty much on top of me, this guy upgraded to a hurricane! Boy, I'm glad I didn't know that! We wouldn't have had time to do much but get and go had we known.

FWIW I slept like a rock until about 5 am when mama called and said "we've got a hurricane on top of us". Given her confused state of mind, I just said its only a tropical storm that we'd be fine. She said that the reports she'd heard had winds of 75mph and more than 10 inches of rain coming down in the time frame of 3am to then. Hubbie jumped up to check on the pool and it was within a hair of flooding which would have been another $3k to fix (I'll thank her later!) Schools are closed all around .Thankfully we still have electricity even tho it has flashed on and off a few times. We are pretty much in the eye right now but the "nasty side of the storm" will stick around til about 9 with rain on and off the rest of the day and most of tomorrow.

My cats are not happy. I now have one more cat (one eyed Squeakers- that's another story) that obviously saw more of Rita than she cared to. All three of them are huddled in opposite corners in the garage, meowing to beat the band.


We're safe and, as far as we can see (it's still stormy dark), no damages other than limbs down. Full daylight will show more, I'm sure. Kids are both here and hubbie had already taken the next two days off so that's a good thing. I may try to get to my office after things have settled down to check in but I would imagine that I also have the day off.


What a way to start the day...;)

[Irishlass]

Wow, I was so glad to see your post first thing this morning. I just saw the weather on TV and you immediately came to mind. I'm glad you and yours are hunkered down, stay there 'til this thing passes. I hope your power stays on. LOL, about your mother, looks like this time she knew what she was talking about. Stay safe and keep us informed.

[snip the elf]

oh my!
That is scary stuff! I hope you stay safe!
keep us informed if you can

[Virgo6]

Stay safe! Last I heard it was a tropical storm, but then I didn't watch the news late last night. Hope you didn't get much damage. Humberto was a sneaky little snake coming in like that unexpected. Good luck and take care.

[frawniemae]

It's daylight now and still raining but not any more than what we normally call a "good soaker". Trees limbs are all over the yard but no damage to the roof or the shed. Pool is full of pinestraw, leaves and small branches(less than 1" diameter) and what is usually a cow pasture across the road from us is now fully dubbed Lake Tolbert (my street name). Looks like this end of town didn't lose power but reports have most of "in town" without. Main street is flooded at the insterstate but a few idiots still tried to go through. the water reportedly is over their hoods. Asuburban had water up to its door windows somewhere (maybe in Beaumont). People just don't realize it is not worth it to drive through water like that. We have flood gauges everywhere so it's not because they don't "know" the water is deep. Stupidity reigns...

Our neighbor has a tree down but it didn't hit any structure. There is a report that a man was killed in Nederland when his carport collapsed on him. Sad... An estimated 100K are without power in SE Texas. SW Louisiana got hit hard, too, with the wind and rain but I haven't heard numbers yet.

Our plans for the weekend are no longer "kick back and take it easy!" We'll have a bonfire about 10 ft tall when the wood dries out some. A couple of smallish trees that Rita had snapped but not brought all the way down are now in pieces all over my yard. All we need is cooler weather so the fire will feel good.

Anybody up for a weinie roast and s'mores! ;)

***Did you get much from this fellow, Pocket? Woodville hasn't been mentioned at all.

[pocket]

Frawnie I'm glad to see you posting. I thought surely you'd have lost power at least. We got very little of anything from Humberto and I'm not complaining about it. It came in at a sharper angle than they thought it would take earlier, and went by to the SE without causing us any grief. We only got a little rain and a little wind.

This was a sneaky devil. Just a few days ago, this was just a low in the gulf "that we'll have to keep an eye on", and lo and behold, it turned into a tropical storm, then a Cat. 1 hurricane. This kind of surprise we can do without. It leaves no time to evacuate. Yesterday, people living on the beach, who were still considering if they needed to evacuate or not, probably got caught...water was already on the streets. They had little time to protect themselves, much less their property.

[frawniemae]

when, on the day of a "unplanned" hurricane, you are making plans to go to the high school football game that same night! Actually I'm going only becasue I had said I'd help chaperone the band. Of course, this was before any "humberto" even existed! It's in Houston and they got very little if any of the storm.

So, the beat goes on!


***Yeah, Pocket....this was a sneaky little devil...Glad to see you got through unscathed.

[Fuel]

Glad everyone is safe! And no major property damage.

I heard this storm may loop back to the gulf and re-strengthen.

[pocket]

Oh yikes....not another storm that goes back and forth. I turned the weather channel back on to see what they're saying. Tropical storms are bad enough...remember Allison that came onshore, went north then turned around and came back and caused 5 billion dollars damage with flooding in Texas.

[pocket]

I just checked the weather channel website, and they said it should move over Louisiana to Alabama and at some point get absorbed by a cool front dropping to the south. It would be good if it got to some of the drought areas.

[Gabby]

:D I'm glad to hear you're okay!

[patchiepoopoo]

Glad all is okay there, that is scary. 3 weeks ago we had 74 MPH winds here in Chicago, they called it straight line winds of hurricane strength, and I was in my closet with my 2 kitties cuz it came out of nowhere and we had no time to even get to the basement. Took out trees all over, so sad.
I have freinds in Alvin, Texas, but I guess that didn't get hit too bad by this Humbug, though I haven't heard anything from them yet. I wonder if they went to Brownsville to try to ditch this storm.
Take care and have fun at the game frawnie !

[pocket]

People didn't even know if they should even evacuate from the beach areas. The beach community had water in their streets yesterday afternoon, but only expected a tropical storm. It didn't strengthen till everyone went to bed so everyone was caught off-guard along the coastline. Alvin is tucked safely south of Houston, (admittedly not far from the gulf) and they probably got nothing since they were on the dry side of the storm as it moved northerly up the coast.

[patchiepoopoo]

Thanks Pocket, I hope you're right.

[Slitter]

I heard about the change to a hurricane on the car radio this morning. First thing I did on arriving at work was to go to noaa's web site to look at the storm track. It looked to be south and east of the Port of Beaumont so I figured both Frawnie and Pocket had escaped the worst. I guess that storm track was from after the worst had already hit. I guess I'll know better next time.

I'm glad you are both OK and escaped any serious damage.

[frawniemae]

I kept an eye on what storm damage may have occurred as the bus rolled west on Interstate 10. About 20 miles past Beaumont it was water, water everywhere. Even the egrets and rosetta spoonbills seemed confused at all the water! But just a bit further, it looked as if hardly any rain at all had come down. Once into Houston, no sign of rain at all and we were on the south side of town.

Out of 44 kids on my bus, only 4 couldn't come. There were about that many from the other 2 buses total missing so we had a good turn out for the band. Vidor almost always fills the stadium for games, even out of towners, but with this one being on a Thursday, and right after a hurricane, we were kind of skimpy on spectators...but still a good turnout. And it was a good game for us... we won 33 to 6. That was good for the guys on the field. Last week we lost 19-13.


School today has been crazy. We had power in our building at first. Then, half of the building went dark. About 30 minutes later this whole end of town went dark. They decided to let the kids that drove themselves sign out and leave (no AC makes for a bad situation with that many people stuck inside buildings). Those who could get someone on their "lists" to come get them could be signed out. If not, they had to stay. It was chaotic trying to match kids with parents &/or guardians and finding kids on the campuses (particularly the high school because it spreads out so far) because everything is on the computer. No power, no 'puter. I'm glad I was spared all that. There were still kids just now f getting to go home because the buses are running their normal routes and times. But, obviously, the power has come back on so they had a little time to cool off with AC.

I'm sure glad I don't substitute teach anymore. Today would have been horrible to be in a classroom.

thanks for all the care and concern. Hopefully, this won't happen again. But, wait...I think I said that after Rita...!:bonk:

[pocket]

It's surprising the amount of damage a minimal hurricane can do. Humberto's punch was amplified by it's slowness as it moved across the area. There's a lot of power lines down and as of news time this evening...still 68,000 customers without power.