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Posted on 09/22/2005 3:25:57 AM PDT by NautiNurse
Looks like another worst case scenario coming together. This time in Texas.
90% of the gas stations I checked have no gas. My local Wal-Mart (Bellfort @ S. Post Oak) has closed until Sunday. The 24 hour grocery stores are not. The freeways are parking lots.
The 12 hour IR Loop shows a defin weakening of the convection along the entire western portion of the storm. This is good news. Rita is still a powerful category 5 hurricane. The weakening of the convection COULD be an early sign that the storm will start to lose some punch as the day wears on. Hope so at least!
You picked a great place to hurry up and wait. Are you otherwise ready for a rough week or two?
UGH!
We need to fill the Gulf with ice. It's too hot. Went to Panama City last week, the water was like a warm bathtub.
Problem is that the surge lags behind the wind speed. Katrina hit Mississppi as a Cat 3 but still had a Cat 5 storm surge.
Yep. There are lots of stalls and folks running out of gas adding to the problem.
To me it's looked as if Rita's beginning to go through an eyewall reforming cycle.
Hurricane Rita Spins Toward Texas Coast
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL
The Associated Press
GALVESTON, Texas - Hurricane Rita grew into a monster storm with 175-mph sustained winds as it swirled toward the Gulf Coast, prompting more than 1.3 million residents in Texas and Louisiana to flee in hopes of avoiding a deadly repeat of Katrina.
"It's not worth staying here," said Celia Martinez as she and several relatives finished packing up their homes and pets to head to Houston. "Life is more important than things."
As Gov. Rick Perry urged residents along the state's entire coast to begin evacuating well in advance of Rita's predicted Saturday landfall, New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the misery-stricken city all over again.
Galveston, Corpus Christi and surrounding Nueces County, low-lying parts of Houston, and New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Category 5 Rita drew energy from balmy gulf waters.
Forecasters said Rita could be the strongest hurricane on record to ever hit Texas. Only three Category 5 hurricanes, the highest on the scale, are known to have hit the U.S. mainland - most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.
Hundreds of buses were dispatched Wednesday to evacuate the poor and move out hospital and nursing home patients, and truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and rescue and medical teams were on standby in an effort to show the lessons learned in Katrina.
"We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we got to be ready for the worst," President Bush said in Washington.
At 5 a.m. EDT Thursday, Rita was centered about 515 miles east-southeast of Galveston and was moving west near 9 mph. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi.
Hurricane-force winds extended up to 70 miles from the center of the storm, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans.
The U.S. mainland has never been hit by both a Category 4 and a Category 5 in the same season. Katrina at one point became a Category 5 storm, but weakened slightly to a Category 4 just before coming ashore.
In the Galveston-Houston-Corpus Christi area, about 1.3 million people were under orders to get out, in addition to 20,000 or more along with the Louisiana coast. Special attention was given to hospitals and nursing homes, three weeks after scores of sick and elderly patients in the New Orleans area drowned in Katrina's floodwaters or died in the stifling heat while waiting to be rescued.
Galveston was already a virtual ghost town. The city's lone hospital was evacuated along with residents of a six-story retirement home.
The coastal city of 58,000 on an island 8 feet above sea level was nearly wiped off the map in 1900 when an unnamed hurricane killed between 6,000 and 12,000. It remains the nation's worst natural disaster.
City Manager Steve LeBlanc said the storm surge could reach 50 feet. Galveston is protected by a seawall that is only 17 feet tall.
"Not a good picture for us," LeBlanc said.
In Houston, the state's largest city and home to the highest concentration of Katrina refugees, geography makes evacuation particularly tricky. While many hurricane-prone cities are right on the coast, Houston is 60 miles inland, so a coastal suburban area of 2 million people must evacuate through a metropolitan area of 4 million people where the freeways are often clogged under the best of circumstances.
By late Wednesday, the blinking taillights of motorists headed north from Houston could be see from planes landing at Houston's William P. Hobby Airport on the south side of the city. All routes leading north and west were jammed with vehicles carrying boxes on their roofs.
A family of three, two children in wheelchairs, and a tired-looking woman in hospital scrubs sat in a darkened and deserted bus stop just off Interstate 610, waiting for a ride.
Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said buses used to take people and their pets off the island were running in short supply Wednesday and warned that stragglers could be left to fend for themselves.
Officials in Corpus Christi were also preparing to load up about 100 buses Thursday morning to evacuate people who have no other way to get out.
Meanwhile, the death toll from Katrina passed the 1,000 mark Wednesday in five Gulf Coast states. The body count in Louisiana alone was put at nearly 800, most found in the receding floodwaters of New Orleans.
Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would destroy key oil installations in Texas and the gulf. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25 percent of the nation's total oil output.
Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. The hurricane season is not over until Nov. 30.
Jennifer McDonald in Galveston planned to ride Rita out. She and her husband have enough food and water to last 10 days in their wooden house. If it gets really bad, the couple will take to the roof.
"If it goes, it goes," the 42-year-old nurse said of the house. "We're completely prepared."
---
Associated Press Writers Deborah Hastings and Juan A. Lozano in Houston, Lynn Brezosky in Corpus Christi and Pam Easton in Galveston contributed to this report.
http://media.phillyburbs.com/2005/09/22/RITA2.jpg
I don't know. Probably. I was when I went to bed and when I woke up. 8:00 -- 4:00
Quick recap for those that missed the 4 am advisory and the Vortex Data Message update -
- At 4 am, Rita was near 24.9N 88.0W, or about 515 miles southeast of Galveston and about 615 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi.
- It was moving to the west-northwest at about 9 mph, and the forecasters expect it to keep doing that the next 24 hours before turning toward the northwest and west-northwest. The current official track is centered just east of Galveston Bay with landfall expected Saturday AM. Many of the computer models are currently suggesting a landfall near the Texas/Louisiana border.
- Maximum sustained winds were around 175 mph, and current forecasts take Rita down to an upper-level Category 4 (150 mph winds) a few hours before landfall.
- Pressure has come up since the advisory to 902 mb (the 4 am advisory estimated pressure at 897 mb).
Don't they loose a little ooomph at night and gain it back when the sun is beaming down on the cloud tops?
Good summary - thanks.
I agree, it's tracking now to be bad for everyone. Just amazing that it's going to go just where it needs to go to re-flood NOLA while likely wiping out Galveston and the oil rigs.
I left yesterday at 2 pm went up 290 and got into bryan college stattion abd settled in my cot at about 730.
I am so glad I listened to my dad...he again was right.
he said if i didn't leave then...i could very well drown in the car because so many people will be trapped in the vehicles when it begins to flood.
Houston may very well see high drowning deaths in vehicles...you know like i how the freeways flood.
hopefully everything pans out well...but am glad to be here in a shelter watching this on the internet and listening to local radio on the internet...almost like being there.
There is already food, water and ice prepositioned.
Just doing what I can :-)
That would make sense. This is the time an ERC was anticipated.
If this thing hit where the track says it will, I have 50% chance of loosing my house. Even if it still stands, it will be trashed. Good Lord Please help us all. Amen.
Houston, Texas
Houston Warning of damage to that city
HURRICANE LOCAL STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HOUSTON/GALVESTON TX
534 AM CDT THU SEP 22 2005
...RITA IS A DANGEROUS CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE WITH WINDS NEAR 175 MPH...
...HURRICANE WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR THE UPPER TEXAS COAST...
...INLAND HURRICANE WATCH FOR ALL OF SOUTHEAST TEXAS...
STRUCTURAL DAMAGE...
THE MAJORITY OF MOBILE HOMES MAY BE SEVERELY DAMAGED. THOSE THAT
SURVIVE COULD BE UNINHABITABLE. HOUSES OF POOR TO AVERAGE
CONSTRUCTION MAY RECEIVE MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING PARTIAL WALL
COLLAPSE AND ROOFS BEING LIFTED OFF. MANY COULD BE UNINHABITABLE.
WELL CONSTRUCTED HOUSES MAY INCUR MINOR DAMAGE TO SHINGLES...SIDING...
GUTTERS...AND BLOWN OUT WINDOWS. UP TO ONE QUARTER OF GABLED ROOFS
MAY FAIL.
PARTIAL ROOF FAILURE IS POSSIBLE AT INDUSTRIAL PARKS...ESPECIALLY TO
THOSE BUILDINGS WITH LIGHT WEIGHT STEEL AND ALUMINUM COVERINGS. OLDER
LOW RISING APARTMENT ROOFS MAY ALSO BE TORN OFF...AS WELL AS RECEIVING
SIDING AND SHINGLE DAMAGE. UP TO ONE QUARTER OF ALL GLASS IN HIGH
RISE OFFICE BUILDINGS MAY BE BLOWN OUT. AIRBORNE DEBRIS MAY CAUSE
DAMAGE...INJURY...AND POSSIBLE FATALITIES.
NATURAL DAMAGE...
ALL TREES WITH ROTTING BASES MAY UPROOT OR SNAP. NEARLY ALL LARGE
BRANCHES SHOULD SNAP. BETWEEN ONE QUARTER AND ONE HALF OF HEALTHY
SMALL TO MEDIUM SIZED TREES MAY BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED.
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