The storm arrived during the second week of September, which is typically the peak of the hurricane season in the Atlantic basin.
High winds, floods and storm surge killed at least 17 in Texas, and the storm’s remnants were responsible for 30 other deaths in several Midwestern states.
The Category 2 storm carved a path of destruction from the lower Mississippi Valley to the Great Lakes, with hurricane-force winds lashing Kentucky and flooding reported as far north as Chicago.
In Ike’s aftermath, Texas Governor Rick Perry warned Galveston residents who had evacuated that it could be "weeks" before they could return to the devastated island city that took some of the brunt of the storm’s surge.
Ike had earlier lashed a long stretch of Cuba less than a month after Hurricane Gustav devastated western parts of the island.
Officials in Havana said that the combined damage from both storms was the worst on record for the country. Gustav and Ike devastated so many of the island’s crops that U.S. President George Bush temporarily lifted the trade embargo against the Communist country so U.S. crops and relief supplies could be sold directly to the Cuban government.
Hurricane Ike Track