Posted on 09/21/2005 1:08:28 PM PDT by HHKrepublican
Edited on 09/21/2005 1:17:36 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hurricane Rita strengthened into a Category 5 storm on Wednesday as it headed for the Texas coast later this week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in its latest update.
The storm, packing winds of 165 mph, was projected to make landfall on Saturday after threatening oil and natural gas facilities in the Gulf Coast region.
Might be the first hurricane ever to save $200 billion.
Paging the DOOMED guys.
I can hear my lib office-mate now: "Global warming."
It's Bush's fault.
Heard on the news last night that some of the waters in the Gulf are 90 degrees, which would feed Hurricane Rita as she passed over them. This is just amazing!
Oh crikey!
The storm surge in Galveston Bay could be of epic proportions if this intensity and track holds up.
I updated your title and text with an article from Reuters. I hope you don't mind.
i was thinking the same thing... praying that it heads north to NO again to put that case to rest.
I wonder what the market for distressed property is like in Galveston right now?
If you were a gamblin' man, and if you could close a deal in the next day, you could end up the owner of record when (and presuming) the stor hits there.
No doubt that would make you eligible to get your fingers in the fed till afterwards...
Just a thought...
Welcome to FR there is already a Hurricane Rita thread started. Thanks though. maybe this will last.
My daughter is in Houston she has quarter tank gas and she is evacuating to come here to Dallas.No gas to be found in all of Houston. She just bought a home and doesn't have flood insurance. She works ironically for Shell oil in Houston and she worked overtime trying to relocate
their employees from NO.She works in their HR department. Now she needs the help she was gettingfor all of them.
Any chance it's going to hit at low tide?? Not that 5 ft matters much with a 25 ft storm surge, but hey, 5 feet is 5 feet.
....which I suppose is possible.
HUH?
Well to try and look on the bright side. It's better that this storm peak early, and then decline some before it reaches land, rather than have it ramp up to category 5 right before it reaches the coast.
Rita reaching cat 5 status now makes it much less likely that it will actually make landfall as a category 5, since hurricanes usually cannot maintain such extreme winds for extended periods of time. I predict it will make landfall as a high 3 or low 4.
Just food for thought. (shrug)
Good luck to the folks in the path of this thing.
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