At best, the NW quadrant should be in play for Houston, no? northeast is the strongest normally, but yes, the eye will pass south of houston, which will put them on the worse side of the storm. it's also worse as far as surge and waves, but i'm not sure that houston has to worry about that from matagorda bay. galveston on the other hand..... this is an interesting storm. the pressure is down to 944 mb, which normally corresponds to a storm that is pushing category 4 strength, but it's only a cat 2 with winds sustained at 100 mph, and given the flight-level winds, even that is probably optimistic. the winds are going to ramp up, they're just lagging behind the pressure, but it's probably going to be a system where the winds are less than you'd expect with such a low pressure, because the storm is so large.