Houston storm history · September 12 – 13, 2008

Hurricane Ike

A huge Category 2 hurricane that pushed a destructive storm surge into Galveston Bay and knocked out power to most of the Houston region.

Every bayou, hour by hour

0 ft 14 ft 28.5 ft (this storm's peak) no reading Every cell is a real archived USGS reading for that bayou, that hour — nothing is interpolated between gauges. Color scale is calibrated to this storm alone; it is not comparable across different storms. Hover a cell for the exact value.

Hurricane Ike made landfall on Galveston Island at 2:10 a.m. on Saturday, September 13, 2008, with sustained winds of about 110 miles an hour, a strong Category 2. Ike's category undersold its danger. It was an enormous storm, and its wind field pushed a very large volume of Gulf water ahead of it.

Storm surge was Ike's defining impact. Surge of roughly 15 to 20 feet struck the Bolivar Peninsula and parts of Galveston Island, and the water swept across Galveston Bay into bay-side communities. In Harris County, Seabrook, Kemah, Shoreacres, La Porte, Clear Lake and neighborhoods along the Houston Ship Channel took on water from the bay rather than from rain. Clear Creek and lower-lying areas near the channel also flooded.

Inland Houston saw mostly wind damage. Downed trees and power lines left roughly two million customers in the region without power, many for one to two weeks. Downtown towers lost windows, and debris covered much of the city. Rainfall was significant, but it was less important than the surge and the wind.

Ike changed how the Texas coast thinks about surge. It prompted years of study into a coastal barrier system for Galveston Bay, often called the Ike Dike, to protect the bay and the Ship Channel from future surges.

The replay for Ike focuses on the bay and the Ship Channel. The rise shown at the Turning Basin gauge reflects water pushed inland from the Gulf. It is not the same as the rain-driven bayou flooding in the other storms on this map.

Sources

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