Hurricane Ike blowing ashore near Galveston in Texas

The chart above shows the windspeed at the National Buoy Data Center's buoy on the Jetty at Galveston Bay. Galveston is the island that seaward of Houston.. The winds were just shy of 40 knots just after 4 p.m.

The picture below is a satellite view of Hurricane Ike about the same time. The storm is different from other storms in that the eye is not clearly visible and is not tightly compact.
Scientist will have a long time to study that and find out why. One immediate impact if it holds up like that when Ike's eye hits land -- at 12 mph, some people will be in the eye 4 or 5 hours.

Below the satellite photo is a graph showing how fast the barometric pressure is falling as Ike approaches


--steve buser