Where is Rita Headed?
Thursday, September 22, 2005 4:40 PM EDT
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  Rita has been moving steadily the past few days and should continue to do so through landfall along the northeastern Texas coast. We are becoming increasingly concerned that after that, Rita will slow down or even stall somewhere over eastern Oklahoma, or the Arklatex. Shown are two different scenarios of what could happen with the future movement of Rita. In the first scenario, the ridge of high pressure north of the storm breaks into two separate centers and the storm runs the gauntlet in between. In this case, the storm would keep moving and very heavy rain will spread inland with some flooding problems.  In the second scenario, the high pressure to the north will not break down as much. This means there will be no window open to the north for the storm to keep moving through. In this case, Rita will slow down and may even stall. This would end up being worse in terms of rainfall and flooding, since tropical moisture accompanying the storm would be stuck over the same region for at least a couple of days. Rainfall of 20 to 25 inches could be the result and this would cause significant flooding problems.
Story by AccuWeather.com meteorologist Gerald Mohler.
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