Glad to see Tex is OK and that his devastation wasn't as bad as it could have been. Hope our other friends there are at least as fortunate.
But telling the people that Category 2 is coming would not make them leave. Had a scale been in effect to account for all events expected this would be a Category 4-5 and people would take it more seriously. All about numbers...
I dunno. The weathermen were constantly saying how much surge was expected where, which is the thing you need to key on. Besides, nobody knew Ike was "only" going to be a 2 on impact until it happened--all the forecasts were for landfall as a 3.
Seems to me most folks just go into denial. They can't imagine what a big surge can do, even when warned about it, so sit there thinking, "How bad could it be?" I think a lot of that comes from the way the coverage of Katrina focused on the slow, fairly gentle, post-storm flooding of New Orleans. Yes, that was technically storm surge, but it wasn't being pushed by the storm at the time, it was just flowing slowly under gravity as it ran back south from the north side of Lake Pontchartrain (where it was NOT gentle). So on TV, folks could watch as New Orleans slowly filled up over the course of a day or 2 without knocking anything down except what was right in front of where the levees broke.
If, OTOH, Katrina coverage had been showing Biloxi and its surroundings, or Plaquemines Parish or Grande Isle in Lousy Anna, where nearly everything (boats, buildings, houses, their contents, cars, trees, etc.) within about 1/2 - 1 mile of the water was converted into a giant solid wall of wreckage piled up for miles far inland, they'd have seen what storm surge REALLY is. It's a like a bulldozer blade dozens of miles wide that just keeps coming for hours, rather like what the tsunami did in the Indian Ocean. It looks like what Ike just did to Galveston.
Anybody living near a coast in an area that's less than about 100 feet ASL, or is surrounded by such areas, should leave when a hurricane of any size is coming to their area. It's really foolish not to. Even a "little" storm surge is a very bad thing.