Hurricane Ike will be entered into the record books for the severe damage it inflicted in and around Galveston, Texas, experts say.
"This one's going to be famous for a long time, if for no other reason than it hit Texas, which hadn't gotten a strike by a damaging hurricane in 25 years," said Jeff Masters, director of Weather Underground, a private commercial forecasting service.
Masters also noted that the cost of Ike's rampage along the Gulf Coast could reach U.S. $22 billion, which would make it the third costliest hurricane on record behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
The center of Hurricane Ike made landfall around 3 a.m. EDT Saturday at Galveston. The storm's peak winds were clocked at 110 miles (177 kilometers) an hour, making it just short of a major Category 3 hurricane. (See photos of the hurricane's aftermath.)
But the storm's enormous size—nearly as large as the state of Texas—spread its destruction from eastern Louisiana to Texas
