By Robert Ray

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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.

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It shook, it rumbled, it creaked and it rocked. That’s pretty much how I can describe my 11th floor hotel room as Hurricane Ike brought 115 mile per hour winds to The Hilton Clear Lake near NASA space center.

I was supposed to sleep and get up to start lives at 6 am with photographer Tom Jachman and reporter Marianne Silber. But who could sleep with the walls heaving, the floor shifting and the windows threatening to blow in? Marianne, Tom and I decided to vacate our upper floor rooms to the ballroom below at about 2:30 in the morning. The hotel staff had designated that safe harbor for guests from the storm. But what we found instead was the lobby inundated with hurricane force winds. The skylights above the front desk had shattered, glass rained down on guests and media taking refuge on the lowest floor of the hotel. The holes in the ceiling created a vacuum as winds sucked debris through the front lobby and out the front door.

As the winds howled through the lobby and threw hotel furniture around like toys, management informed us of another problem. Water from the Lake in back of the hotel was making it’s way in from all sides. The parking lot was overtaken and the stairwell we were using to get to our rooms was filling from the basement up. They advised everyone to move up to higher floors or be trapped in the lobby that now had been taken over by Ike. We retreated back to our hotel room and reported live from a sixth floor balcony as the storm howled on through the morning. Even at daylight, winds still topped 90 mph and rains swirled outside the hotel. By 10 am, the wind was still whipping trees and minor debris around, but the worst of Ike was over.

Tonight, our hotel is without power and running water and took lots of hits during the storm. Boats in the marina behind our hotel are either capsized or completely submerged. Parts of the hotels exterior litter the driveway out front and several cars have blown out windows or are floating in the middle of the lake. Highway 164 leading to the Kemah Boardwalk and Texas City is completely blocked by boats, cars, furniture, logs, telephone poles and piles of people’s belongings. Ike passed directly over us.

With the exception of the 45 minutes of complete calm in the middle of the eye, we undoubtedly took a huge hit. Authorities are just beginning to give us a picture of what it looks like out there and we will likely be reporting on this powerful storm for weeks, possibly even months to come.

I’m home in Atlanta, washing the clothes I wore in Tropical Storm Hanna, only to repack them for Hurricane Ike.

If this storm maintains its current track, there’s a good chance we’ll be heading back to Louisiana, which is still drying out from Hurricane Gustav.

Gustav was not “the mother of all storms” New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had predicted. However, the system did pack a powerful punch to some of the smaller towns and parishes outside the national spotlight, as the media focused attention on the levees protecting major population centers.

Linda, a FOX News viewer and reader of this blog, writes: “Please remind the country that these people may live in small towns, but have big needs.”

While reporting on Gustav for local FOX stations around the country, one of the most common questions I got from anchors is whether Louisiana residents would become more complacent after seeing how well New Orleans fared in this storm.

While there may be some resentment for the mandatory evacuations, residents will, hopefully, remember the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,600 people three years ago.

Gustav bore many similarities to Katrina while out at sea, but came ashore as a considerably weaker storm. The Crescent City’s new flood control system has yet to be tested against the “next Katrina.”

Skies are often spectacularly colorful the night before a big storm

In Myrtle Beach, Hanna didn’t pack much of a punch. Some jabs, perhaps, easily deflected.

We got plenty of rain, coming down in sheets at times, or sideways with the gusts, but never really stinging my face like I’ve felt in more significant storms past.

The wind swirled and stopped and swirled some more. We might’ve had peak in the 50’s, but there was never a time where I had trouble standing.

The most impressive part of the Tropical Storm here on the Grand Strand was the angry surf, whitecaps curling and pounding the beach in rows, washing up and over my boots as I stood at the edge of the dunes for live shots.

Ike, on the other hand, looks like Hanna’s criminal cousin, ready to commit felonies across the Florida Keys and beyond. He could be very dangerous and folks would be smart to avoid crossing his path.

So of course we’re gonna head straight down there and stand in his way.

Photographer Tommy Chiu newsgathers on Myrtle Beach before Hanna

The hotel threw lounge chairs in the pool so they wouldn

11:16pm
The winds are the strongest yet, but not yet the strongest expected. That lounge chair in the pool trick we mentioned earlier… Not working! They’re being blown out of the water. We’ve been doing hits every 5 to 10 minutes all night long. We’re running up to a hotel room whenever we can to drop our wet things in a dryer. Not sure why we’re bothering!

7:47pm

Lull over. We’re live on beach. The sand is whipping up and stinging my legs. I bought waterproof pants, but they have somehow disappeared. So I’m wearing shorts.

7:23pm
There’s a lull in the storm now. I can see the horizon again. There’s even a family walking the beach.

6:16
This is my first storm chasing experience. It’s interesting how the bands come and go with different wind speeds. I’m taking shelter inside a hotel for a few minutes. The wind was howling but the suddenly just stopped. A woman here yelped “ooh!”. It’s funny how sudden silence can shock people almost as much as loud noises.

5:56pm
The sky is now a grayish white, you can no longer see the horizon line. The rain is coming down hard. I’m already drenched. My fingers are pruned. And we haven’t seen the worst of Hanna yet.

5:36pm
The wind’s picking up and the surf’s pounding the sand in Myrtle Beach, SC as Tropical Storm Hanna is getting ready to come ashore. Rick’s doing his affiliate liveshots next to a message someone scratched in the sand: “Welcome to MB Hanna”. That pretty much sums up the mood here. Locals and even some tourists are riding out the storm.

TWITTER LINK: http://twitter.com/jonathanserrie

FRIDAY AFTERNOON:

We’re reporting live from Myrtle Beach (although there’s not much beach to report from). The driving surf has covered much of the sand with warm, shallow water as Tropical Storm Hanna approaches. Click on the video to watch.

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FRIDAY MORNING:

We woke up to gray skies and moderately strong surf — a far cry from the calm, sunny weather that greeted our arrival in Myrtle Beach, SC yesterday.

We begin our live reports at 10:30 AM Eastern Time. As we set up our equipment on the beach, employees at nearby hotels are bringing in pool furniture in anticipation of heavy winds tonight.

While people here are taking basic precautions, their major concern does not seem to be Tropical Storm Hanna. All the talk is about Hurricane Ike — a much stronger storm in the Atlantic that may affect the U.S. next week.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON:

After returning from Gustav, we spent a day in Atlanta — just time enough to wash our clothes and dry out our equipment for the next storm.

Now, I’m blogging from Hartsfield-Jackson Airport as FOX field producer Brooks Blanton, freelance producer Kip Grosenick and I are waiting to board a flight to Myrtle Beach, SC to cover Hanna.

My home video camera, which absorbed too much moisture while shooting my last post (despite my best efforts to seal it in a plastic sandwich bag), has dried out and started working again. So, I plan to post new videos shortly after our arrival on the Carolina coast.

There isn’t much difference between covering a tropical storm and covering a hurricane before it arrives…

We still have to pack all our bad weather gear, stock up on water, dry food and supplies and find a suitable place for the satellite truck to park so we can stay live thru the storm.

Wednesday morning we flew to Savannah Georgia from New York, then had to drive nearly four hours north to Myrtle Beach South Carolina because Hanna shifted her path. We scouted a couple possible locations along the way, including the Litchfield Inn on Pawleys Island (great spot but too far south)before settling at the newly built Sandy Beach Resort just south of the main drag in Myrtle.

When we found out the city wouldn’t let us park our sat truck on the sidewalk in front of the hotel (the only spot protected from the expected winds) we found another spot just up the road at the Windsurfer Motel.

Today we shot interviews and b-roll on the beach, on a pier and in town for a story we put together for our affiliates across the country. We’ll be live until 2 am ET and do it all again tomorrow.

So far the weather has been picture perfect, but forecasters say we’ll get at least tropical storm force winds tomorrow afternoon and evening and heavy rains thru the night.