Local News

MIAMI (CBS4) ― Hurricane Ike's outer rain bands are lashing the upper Texas and southwestern Louisiana coasts, and hurricane force wind gusts are already hitting Galveston Island.

Its center is expected to be over the Texas coast some time overnight or early Saturday. Even though Friday night Ike remained off the Texas coast, winds, rain, storm surge and flooding have already struck as the storm inches closer. Schools have been closed and the National Weather Service went so far as to warn of "certain death," for some residents who insisted on staying in Galveston.

At 11:00 p.m., the center of Hurricane Ike was located near latitude 28.6 north, longitude 94.4 west, or about 55 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas. Maximum sustained winds are near 110 mph, with some stronger gusts. Ike remains a Category 2 storm, but could reach major hurricane status, Category 3, by the time it makes landfall.

Ike's eye was forecast to strike somewhere near Galveston early Saturday, then head inland for Houston, but the sprawling weather system nearly as big as Texas was already buffeting the Gulf Coast and causing flooding in areas still recovering from Labor Day's Hurricane Gustav.

The storm has been moving between the west-northwest and northwest near 12 mph. A northwest direction is expected to continue overnight with a turn to the north expected some time Saturday.

A hurricane warning remains in effect from Morgan City, Louisiana to north of Port Aransas, Texas.

Because of its ominous size, storm surge and flooding were the greatest threats. In a move designed to avoid highway gridlock as the storm closed in, most of Houston's 2 million residents hunkered down and were ordered not to leave.

White waves as tall as 15 feet were already crashing over Galveston's seawall. It was enough to scare away Tony Munoz and his wife, Jennifer, who went down to the water to take pictures, then decided that riding out the storm wasn't a good idea after all.

"We started seeing water come up on the streets, then we saw this. We just loaded up everything, got the pets, we're leaving," Tony Munoz, 33, said. "I've been through storms before but this is different."

Daniel Brown, a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center, said Ike was about 600 miles across, roughly the distance between Houston and Panama City, Fla. "It takes up almost the northern Gulf," he said.

In southwest Louisiana, Ike breached levees Friday, threatening thousands of homes of fishermen, oil-field workers, farmers and others. The area south of Houma was the site of the worst flooding. By early afternoon, crews were attempting to plug four breaches.

"We've got a bad situation," said Windell Curole, levee manager for Terrebonne Parish. "There's a lot of levee we can't deal with -- hundreds of feet. Rita-like flooding is a possibility."

Rita followed a similar route to Ike's -- slowly crossing the Gulf from southeast to northwest. Rita's storm surge pushed salt water up to 20 miles inland.

Forecasters expected Ike to push tidal surges of up to 19 feet into Cameron Parish, a sparsely populated area of marshland that borders Texas. In Lake Charles, a 13-foot storm surge was possible.

Texans were getting hit from both sides, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lowell, a Pacific system, dumped nearly 8 inches of rain on Lubbock in 24 hours, flooding homes and roads. Some businesses closed, and Texas Tech University and other schools canceled Friday classes.

Should Ike strengthen to a Category 3, it would be the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago.

For Houston -- a city filled with gleaming skyscrapers, the nation's biggest refinery and NASA's Johnson Space Center -- it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage.

Galveston, a barrier island and beach town about 10 feet above sea level, was also the scene of the nation's deadliest hurricane, the great storm of 1900 that left at least 6,000 dead. But that also was before officials had the ability to warn residents that a hurricane was coming, and before the seawall was built to protect the community.

If the storm stays on its projected path, it could head up the Houston ship channel and through Galveston Bay, which Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called a nightmare scenario.

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Tropical Weather Resources

• Tracking Ike - 11 AM Advisory
• 8:00 a.m.: Ike Weakens, Eye Over Cuba
• CBS4.com Hurricane Info
• CBS4.com Hurricane Preps