When I lived in Utah, we would have these massive snow storms, so the snow plows just shoved the snow to the side of the road. After a few storms, you kind of felt like going down an olympic luge track. I never thought I would experience that on the Texas Gulf Coast. Take a look at the following picture. This is the sand that they moved off the road.

I found that in town, about a third of the stop lights are still not functioning, but power is restored to most of the island.

Out on the beach there was some pretty bad damage that hadn’t even been touched yet.

Yep, that is a concrete driveway folks. Don’t tell me that hurricanes aren’t bad storms.

This picture shows the damaged walkway to the beach at Palisade Palms. This is the condo project that I worked on and the reason for my visit to Galveston. I was tasked with evaluating damaged to the project for insurance purposes. See how the end just kind of drops off at the waters edge? Well, the beach used to be about 50 feet farther away than it is now.

The main street that leaves to I-45 has countless thousands of dollars in possessions that are just garbage now.

But businesses are trying to open even though the damage isn’t all repaired.

There are still boats that a far from the docks, like this one that is still in the median of the freeway.

Overall, I am impressed with the people of South Texas and their work ethic. I have no doubt that they will rebuild and never complain. Even if it takes a long time.

Wall arch in Arches National Park has collapsed.

This is a photo of what it looked like last week.

Of course, this is a natural phenomenon, but I’m sure we could find some way to blame the Bush Administration.

Update: another video here.

People have always told me that when they hear a tornado, it sounds like a freight train. As a sound professional I have always wondered what that sound was really like. So trying to be as objective as possible, let me qualify the sound for you. Keep in mind that outside it is dark and windy. The rain is pounding down so hard that you can’t see across the street. The lightning is flashing almost continuously and you can’t identify thunder. I think that what I was hearing was not the lack of thunder, but continuous thunder, the wind blowing at 70 MPH, and the rain pouring down at about an inch every 30 minutes. The cumulative effect sounds remarkably like a freight train.

I must say that it was extremely frightening to huddle in the coat closet at 3:45 am with my whole family with wide eyes and the same look of fear that I was feeling.

This high mountain desert boy doesn’t relate to this weather.

Teryl wrote about it her blog here. She included a video for proof just in case you don’t believe it.

Notice the high and low temperatures for Monday.