By Bob Jeswald Chief Meteorologist
stormpulse.com/NASA
By Tim Gaynorstormpulse.com/NASA
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Stumble It!GALVESTON, Texas (Reuters) - Thousands of people fled coastal areas in the path of Hurricane Ike on Thursday as the storm gathered strength on a collision course with the Texas Gulf Coast but on a track that would skirt the heart of the U.S. offshore oil patch.
Ike was a Category 2 storm with 100 mph (160 kph) winds and likely will come ashore as a dangerous Category 3 storm on the five-step intensity scale with winds of more than 111 mph (178 kph) late on Friday or early on Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said.
The latest projections pointed Ike toward the middle of the Texas coast, skirting to the west of the main region for offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico, which provides a quarter of U.S. oil and 15 percent of its natural gas. Flooding from Ike could put coastal refineries in jeopardy.
The hurricane's current track would see it hit the Texas coast near Freeport in Brazoria County, just south of Galveston. It could be the worst storm to hit the Texas coast since Hurricane Carla came ashore near Corpus Christi in 1961.
Tens of thousands of residents near Galveston and Port Arthur were ordered to evacuate. The 2 million-plus residents of Houston, about 50 miles inland from Galveston, could see hurricane-force winds as Ike moves inland but officials have ordered no widespread evacuations.
About 2 million people fled Louisiana coastal cities in the path of Hurricane Gustav, which hit on September 1.
"We're not talking about gently rising water. We are talking about a storm surge," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said, ordering the evacuation of Galveston.
Ike could push a 20-foot surge of water ahead of it along with "dangerous battering waves," U.S. forecasters said.
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