Thursday, September 11, 2008

Hurricane Ike

Have ya seen this monster??

Wow! This thing is hundreds of miles from us but we are having major flooding and storm surge here in my town of Pensacola, FL (in the upper right hand corner.) We went out to the beach this evening along with hundreds of other amazed onlookers because the waves were running 20 feet! It was simply amazing. I have lived here most of my life and never seen the waves and storm surge like this.

We ran into our Pastor and his family out there at the beach. We stood and talked to them for awhile while Dakota and their kids played in the sand. Their son and Dakota are best friends so they were thrilled to have run into each other.

The lifeguards were not allowing anybody (including surfers) to get in the water. It was totally off limits...they wouldn't even allow people to get down close to the water because rogue waves would come up real high every once in awhile. We had one of those waves come up on us while we were standing along the shore talking - everybody scattered and started running for the sidewalks. We were actually standing pretty far back too! It was shocking how far up the water came. It knocked my shoes off and my pastor's shoes! We were both scrambling trying to grab up our shoes before they were swept back out into the ocean.
This picture is close to sunset. I took this to show you the water line. See where the sidewalk is at the bottom of the picture? See where the people are standing? That's about where we were all standing talking...it's pretty far from the surf as you can tell. Between those people and the sidewalk there is a dark line - that is where the water came up when the rogue wave attacked us! LOL
This is how far back the lifeguards were making everybody stand. If anybody got any closer they made announcements to get back away from the water.
This video was taken at 8:00 am this morning at Pensacola Beach....pretty amazing considering how far the water is from these picnic tables!!!

4 comments:

J.P. Butterfield said...

As of this morning (9/12) the National Weather Service in Galveston, Texas, is telling people to get out or face certain death. You're right, it's a monster!

Hunny Bee said...

Yeah, I heard about the cerain death too. That is insane. I've lived my whole life in the midwest, and while we do get monster tornados from time to time and big storms come through, I can't imagine what a hurricane is like.
I've been to Pensacola once. We stayed on an island in a condo. The island was all sand I think. I remember hearing that the buildings couldn't be insured because of where they were built. It was beautiful staying there but I wonder what that island looks like now!

Rebekah said...

Wow- that would be awesome to see in person. Hope you guys stay safe.

Claire said...

Hey Elisa, I checked weather, and it sounds like you will have some, that's for sure. It's days like this you are probably thankful you homeschool, huh? :-) Praying for all in Ike's path.