At 7:10 UST on September 13, 2008 (2:10 am local),
Hurricane Ike made landfall at the east end of
Galveston Island, Texas, as the largest
North Atlantic hurricane in recorded history. At the height of the storm, Ike's cloud mass essentially covered the entire Gulf of Mexico. The Wind and Surge Destructive Potential Classification Scale, which was detailed in Tropical Cyclone Destructive Potential by Integrated Kinetic Energy (by Dr. Mark Powell and Dr. Tim Reinhold, April 2007) offers a new way to assess hurricane size and strength by calculating the total kinetic energy contained in a 1-meter deep horizontal slice of the storm at an elevation of 10 meters above the land or ocean surface. Using this type of calculation, the integrated kinetic energy was calculated for Ike and was found to be 25 percent greater than the comparable maximum estimate for
Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Hurricane Ike caused
cataclysmic destruction of the peninsula, reducing the region to rubble and causing severe, permanent change in the shoreline. Entire communities along the upper Texas coast were simply wiped out by Ike's catastrophic storm surge. Ike's effects were disproportionally felt near the long, low-lying Bolivar Peninsula which has typical elevations around 2 m. Despite being only a strong category 2 storm with maximum winds at landfall of 95 knots (49 m/s, Berg, 2009), Ike's extremely large, long-lasting surge and waves devastated the peninsula. The Bolivar Peninsula was just to the right of landfall, placing it on the strong side of the hurricane. H Wind reconstructions (Powell et al., 1998) show winds blowing strongly from offshore-to-onshore for most of the
storm, which acted to increase both
surge and
waves. Surge is extremely important for the particular case of the Bolivar Peninsula, as it allowed large waves to penetrate inland into areas they could not otherwise have reached. Shoreline erosion was around 75 m, which undermined the piled foundations of oceanfront buildings. Most other houses in this area were reduced to either piles or slabs by large waves riding on surge, with only a very few remaining more or less intact. Peak coastal surges reached . Water depths of at least covered all of the Bolivar Peninsula, with most areas covered by at least of water (not including wave action). Much of the southern part of Chambers County was also inundated by at least of water. According to post-storm analyses by both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Hurricane Research Division and Applied Research Associates (ARA), a research and engineering company, the best estimates of 3-second peak wind gusts along the eastern portion of the peninsula were between 110 mph and 115 mph. Research observations also suggest most of eastern and southeastern Texas was subjected to tropical storm and hurricane-force winds for ten hours, and possibly longer. Cindy Horswell of
McClatchy - Tribune Business News said that authorities said that 3,600 structures on the peninsula, 62% of them, were destroyed or severely damaged by Ike's storm surge. By January 2009, 40% of Bolivar Peninsula's population had returned. Of the Bolivar Peninsula communities,
Gilchrist received the fewest returnees.
Bolivar Peninsula after Ike File:Hurricane Ike Gilchrist damage edit.jpg File:Hurricane Ike Bolivar Peninsula, TX.jpg ==Government and infrastructure==