Hurricane Rita

It appears, accoring to the local news and from collegues that Rita is pretty serious and its heading in my area (Houston). Anyways, wish us luck. :cool:

Whoa. Category 2 yesterday morning, Category 4 now. 2 days to go till probable landfall.

RUN AWAY!

Menwhile, I will perform the ancient hurricane-weakening dance, as passed down from my ancestors.

Extra warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico are adding a ton of power to this. (like Katrina) Hopefully it'll not ramp up to C5, or if it does, there's a band of colder water along the shore to knock it back down again.

They're supposedly evacuating some of the NO evacuees out of Texas and moving them here to Nashville.

Good luck and best wishes.

And hee on the hurricane dance.

Alex

The one good thing is the gulf waters are slightly less warm then they were when Katrina rolled through. Not by more than a couple of degrees, I think, but every little bit helps.

True enough.

The last projection I looked at made it seem like they're expecting it to stay Class 4. Which certainly is very suck to be in the path of. But every little bit helps.

Alex

Damn, spoke too soon...

Cat 5, 165 MPH winds. Joy.

Alex

And here goes another market my desk services *groan*. I hope those people get to safety instead of calling us during the hurricane wondering why they internet doesn't work. Yes, we had lots of those during katrina before the local lines went out

Best of luck to the folks in the path, and take comfort that your state & local politicos are as corrupt & incompetant as the ones down here in Louisiana!

This is why I live in the desert.

I wonder if they'll claim racism because the injured are Hispanic, this time. :rolleyes:

(Andrew...250k out of houses. 63% of the homeless and injured were white. Response time from the government: 5 days [just like Katrina].)

I'm not sure it was called racism, in the European media at least it sounded more like ... incomism? ;) :D

... and I don't think we should discuss the validity of the media's claims here, as this would bring us to political considerations in no time at all ;) .

It appears that i'll be riding through the hurricane. For those htat are curious i'm in the Fort Bend area (the suburbs of Houston). It appears that we'll get 90mph winds and fortunately we are on high ground and have good drainage against the flood. Its really hard to get out.. the traffic is clogged like War of the Worlds and gas stations are depleted.

Oh dear Space Cadet, I hope you manage to get through it without too many problems, and anyone else that's affected. I didn't realise untill about a week later that my Uncle had been staying in New Orleans at the time of the other one, but fortunatelly he was temporarilly staying in a trailer home.. so he just drove it 40 miles away :)

Well, I saw the mayor of Huston giving quite a 'get out of here!' press conference, where he urged everyone to leave, and to make sure that they help anyone they know leave.
And if you can't get out on your own, and you can't get someone to take you with them, they have #'s where you can call and they will get you!

So, he doesn't sound SO corrupt. But doing a major, MAJOR CYA dance!

So Space Cadet, in the words of the Govenator...."Get to the Choppah!!!"

seriously, stay safe.

Technically, i'm not in Houston.. i liive in Sugar Land. So i am not in the storm surge area thankfully. But yeah, we've taken precautions like food and persihables and filling the bathtub with water and all that. As well as mentally preparing for 10 hours of 90mph or less winds. All of the houses in my city are made of brick so we have a slight advantage of making it through. I am waiting around 1:00pm to see the trajectory of the hurricane. So far from what i've been hearing is that its heading eastward.

Best of luck to everyone concerned. I really don't know what else to say :(