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Harvey Remnants

tyeomans

By tyeomans,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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BallFour4

BallFour4

Posted
Posted (edited)

It's overcast and not raining on the mainland across the causeway, Seawall Blvd has traffic equal to a weekday as tourists that waited it out are waking up from perhaps a good nap. Galveston hasn't had a wind gust recorded higher than 42 mph since 2:00 am, and it's died down to 20 or so. In a few minutes we expect to see the sun, it's visible towards the mainland.

 

I like the other thread about crystal ball predictions, so here goes; if the harbor master opens the channel then you might see a ships able to return tomorrow. Remember it's not just Galveston. It's Houston, Bayport, Barbours Cut and Texas City ports that are impacted by the close, and refineries that depend on ship traffic depend on the channel.

 

Provisioning a ship is another story; trucks deliver to the refrigerated docks prior to a ships arrival, and the freeway is open. On my bike ride I didn't pay attention to the numbers of trucks. Other logisitics are the fleet of buses used to do a changeover of that many passengers. That alone might negate a Sunday turnover of a cruise ship. Using just that as a predictor then Monday might be a better guess.

 

Good luck all you travelers; we dodged a bad storm (so far) for the home of four (and growing) cruise ships, so give thanks! We're headed to 4:30 mass at St Clare, come sing in the choir. Look for me :)

 

Kinda worried about this yellow buddy...

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Edited by BallFour4
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spleenstomper

spleenstomper

Posted
Posted

TS Harvey is only moving at 2 mph, so it is essentially stalled. Galveston will likely get more rain bands (could be hit or miss). The drainage is good news; it will obviously help if/when it starts raining again.

 

When is high tide again? I believe it is low tide right now.

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spleenstomper

spleenstomper

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Harvey updates from City of Galveston today (Aug 26):

 

http://www.galvestontx.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=539 (afternoon update)

 

Here is the main feed, with most recent news on top

http://www.galvestontx.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=538

 

From the link:

 

HARVEY: Saturday (August 26th) Afternoon Update

 

Below is our Saturday afternoon update on the impacts of Hurricane Harvey to Galveston.

Current Impacts & Response:

  • We have impassable roads throughout the City that we are updating on our website and here on Facebook
  • We have had significant power outages across the city
  • As of 11am we had 4,900 without power
  • We have had 8” of rain in some places
  • We have had minimal structural damage
  • For today, our beaches are closed
  • Galveston Ferry is still closed
  • San Luis Pass Bridge is closed
  • The Galveston Firefighters have answered 81 calls yesterday but no structure fires. All calls were for EMS and downed power lines. As of 12pm today they had already responded to 27 more calls

What We Are Expecting:

  • Still expecting another 15-30” of rain
  • 4’ tide will remain into Thursday
  • Should be expected that during the heavy rain bands, drainage will be slow and roads will be impassable

Remember, turn around don't drown Galveston! #harvey

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Pudgesmom

Pudgesmom

Posted
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What We Are Expecting:

  • Still expecting another 15-30” of rain
  • 4’ tide will remain into Thursday
  • Should be expected that during the heavy rain bands, drainage will be slow and roads will be impassable

How can anyone imagine that cruise ships will be able to come and go in this? Much less the passengers, the luggage, the provisioning, etc.

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spleenstomper

spleenstomper

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"Continued storm surge flooding in Galveston Bay a major concern

Harvey’s counter-clockwise circulation is bringing strong onshore winds to the coast near Houston and Galveston, which is driving a major storm surge into Galveston Bay. As of 2:30 pm CDT Saturday, storm surge heights at four tide gauges in the bay and connecting waters were 3.0 – 4.0’. As Harvey continues to pound the Houston area with torrential rains over the next few days, high storm surge levels will prevent rivers from properly draining rainwater into the bay, causing the rivers to back up and create widespread flooding in the nation’s fourth largest city. See our post from Friday on the potential multi-day risks to the Houston Ship Channel, western Galveston Bay, and adjoining areas. You can use our Wundermap with the “Storm Surge” layer turned to see a map with the surge values plotted, and overlay the “Weather Stations” layer to see observed precipitation and winds."

From new blog post: https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/heavy-damage-texas-harvey-now-tropical-storm

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momof3cruisers

momof3cruisers

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Seems like with all this flooding and so many cancelled flights, Royal isn't giving their passengers much of a chance to get to Galveston. So what if the ship can get in to port (and presumably leave again) if the passengers getting off can't get anywhere and the passengers scheduled to embark can't arrive?

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spleenstomper

spleenstomper

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More than a half-dozen commercial cargo ships have joined four cruise ships in a logjam at the Port of Galveston, waiting to get the green light to port.

 

More than 20,000 cruise ship passengers are stuck at sea inthe ships, along with commercial ships including roll-on/roll-off carriers, two grain ships and a few bulk carriers,said interim port director Peter Simons Saturday.

 

"The four cruise ships - two of which were due today - those are everyone's highest priority," he said.

 

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-weather/hurricaneharvey/amp/Hurricane-Harvey-leaves-logjam-of-cargo-cruise-11975592.php

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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garycarla

garycarla

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Apparently they have folks in cruise line headquarters battling each other to come up with the dumbest, most worthless, customer impacting, dangerous way to handle things. Staff gets extra points if the toilets back up, ship runs out of fuel, kitchen shuts down, power goes off, and nobody is told anything.

 

Sorry, just sharing what some people apparently think takes place. There are no easy answers folks.

 

Directed ONLY to those that feel this way. Yes, it might be you-LOL! Those that understand this will get those. Those that do not will assume I work for the cruise lines.

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Loonbeam

Loonbeam

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I DO have inside information, kind of. Spoke to a friend who does cruises ship port operations at Galveston .

 

The short version..

 

No one knows when the port will reopen, for how long and what operations will be available. Right now (as of 4:30 pm EST Sat) there is no access to the port via roads for most vehicles as they are flooded.

 

There is a CHANCE that a break in the storm may allow the roads to drain to get trucks, etc in on Sunday, so they have been asked to stand by in case they are needed to assist and can get in.

 

IF there is a break in the storm and IF conditions are safe and IF there is enough warning they MAY try to get some ships in and disembarked. Following that IF conditions stay stable long enough for turnarounds they may try to board inbound passengers. - IFs are her emphasis.

 

The situation is changing hour by hour so the reason the cruise lines are hedging their bets is that quite literally no one knows what will be happening tomorrow, monday, etc. Until then they are in a holding pattern. There are many guesses, but too many factors to be definitive. Until the port decides what the possibilities are everything the lines say is a best guess and status update only.

 

Her personal observation is that if you were thinking of driving to Galveston, don't. While they are definitely not out of operation, the roads are bad and spates of bad weather make them impassable or unsafe and there is no guarantee you will be able to get where you need to go once there especially if rain picks up.

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perditax

perditax

Posted
Posted
Just saw that, tomorrow looking bad for Houston and Galveston from a rain perspective.

 

Those of us with no skin in the game (impending cruises *or* cruise line loyalty--or I suppose another way to put it would be "the weather nerds") have been bringing up the predicted flooding and storm surge problems for a couple of days. This wasn't ever going to be a five-hour event.

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