"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."
What is the BFD about 100-125 mph winds if you are in a house or apartment building built to code? You might get some roof damage, but it is not going to blow down your walls -- unless your house is so shoddily built that you should not be living there.
I rode through Alicia in a General Home (building tomorrow's slums today) that was in SE Friendswood. That was a Cat 3. The eye wall came within a mile of my house. I have friends with houses in Dickinson and Galveston whose homes survived those winds -- and these are houses built in the 1960s and 70s, before the codes were tightened.
If someone lives in a trailer, mobile home, or other metal structure, yeah -- evacuating a your home in Katy makes sense. But you should do that *any* time tropical storm winds or tornadoes are forecast -- not just for hurricanes.
In a well-built permanent structure rising water and tornadoes are the real dangers in a hurricane, not wind. And you are just as likely to be hit by a hurricane-spawned tornado in Austin as in West Houston. (When we evacuated for Allen, we went to Austin. The shelter we stayed in had the roof taken off by a tornado spawned from Allen after it moved inland.)
Our first plan for Rita was to go to a relative that lived in Katy. Unfortunately he and his family were in California on vacation. So we went to the Hill Country because we were in an area that could be innundated. But a trade between the risk of 100-125 mph winds (absent flooding) on my home vs. the inconvenience and hazard of a 16-hr drive to dubious safety *is* a no-brainer. Safer at home than on the road.
Were the trees in your neighborhood built to withstand a hurricane? I don't know about Texas trees but when storms knock down Alabama trees and those trees fall on houses, the houses go down too.
What's the big deal? Flying projectiles. Same problem in an F2-F3 tornado. And you don't want to be there when a telephone pole gets rammed through your house.