By Robert Ray

done

Hurricane Ike ripped through the Gulf of Mexico all this past week only to make landfall late Friday and early Saturday in south Texas.

Jeff Flock and I decided to experiment with some technology and maybe some luck or maybe stupidity, or maybe.. Oh never mind.

We hunkered down in a parking garage Friday night. We sat in the car listening to the crank radio and feeling the anxiety of the possibility of some serious storm surge and a night of just plain old hell.

Ike was a mean sucker come 11pm Friday. The wind and rain ripped through the parking garage. It was so dark that all would could hear was wood and metal being snapped and thrown violently into the ground.
Massive sounds of mangled destruction echoed in our ears.

Every couple minutes we would look at each other and say something like “man, that was bad sounding,” or “jesus, did you feel that?”

Thankfully, we brought a night vision camera to help show you why we said such things and help illustrate why a hurricane at night can be so dangerous. With the help of some infrared technology, a lot of plastic bags and some dumb luck we found ourselves walking up to the sea wall in the pitch black with the camera and really experiencing Ike’s wrath.

I write today with a clean bill of health, that’s the dumb luck I suppose.

I will not do this again.

All my dues are now paid as far as shooting night vision video on a sea wall with 100 mph winds, rain bullets, debris fields, surging water, wet clothes, etc, etc, etc.

My photographic mission of capturing a hurricane at night was a semi-success and I am happy with just that.

As you may see in the video, a hurricane has the ability to wipe anything in it’s path off the earth. The loss of life, property and money can often be enormous and this time its really hitting Texans and Americans in the wallet.

You may be noticing the Gas prices going up again. No coincidence, it’s all about Ike. With so many Oil refineries in south Texas being down the surge from water may be the least of America’s concern but rather the inflated pump politics.

Yes, weather and gas are like republicans and democrats, they just don’t agree.

We are and will pay dearly for nature’s wild ride and so the next time you go to fill up your car this week and you pay nearly 5 bucks a gallon…just remember those night vision images and realize that the weather dominates our life on this hostile planet called Earth.