You and me both, jeffers, sweating it out...with lots of reason...if the weather system hadn't pulled east, we'd be seeing the horrors of what a strong storm would have done to Kemah and Bacliff and Clear Lake and Galveston and so on. The pics we're seeing from the Louisiana coast about flooding would be Texas pics.
When it was time to evacuate, there was no way to be sure where it was going to hit. If they had waited, it would have been too late to evacuate.
My brother who evacuated, says they need to evacuate a week early, not just 3 days.
I really don't understand all of this Monday morning quarterbacking.
We have plenty of neighbors and friends that chose to leave. They based that on the NHC depection of what would happen over our part of town: Cat 5 makes landfall with 175 mph winds. Tracks over the west side of town and hits Katy and NW houston with 100-125 mph winds.
That's really a no-brainer for most people. Everyone that I've talked to that has made it back into town is fine with their decision. They know that sitting for 16 hrs in traffic to get to San Antonio or Dallas was based on the information that they had at the time.
The are also fine with facing long lines to get back in to town and no a/c for a week--they just want to get back home.
If any city waits until it's certain it's going to be hit, it'll be too late to evacuate. Better to err on the side of caution, even if the hurricane ends up hitting elsewhere. Evacuating for nothing may seem like a big inconvenience, but dying is even more inconvenient. No evacuation should be started less than 48 hours before expected landfall.
Good common sense here. Hurricanes don't always go where the last minute predictions say they will and they don't always weaken as they approach land. Sometimes, as with Andrew in FL, they strengthen at the last moment. My aunt, the mother of my Houston cop cousin, was in Columbia, SC when Hugo went in at Charleston. Columbia (around 100 miles from Charleston) went through days of blocked roads and no power. She was really worried and so was I.
I worried about Kemah although I haven't been there in years. My family owned a house right by the water, and it was blown away by Carla. Now the same place is a fancy entertainment area (we should have kept that property a few more years!), so I suspect what would have happened if the storm had hit.