What are we in some perverse love child of the movie "Groundhog Day" and The Weather Channel?
Rita is officially a fucking monster.
The 1:53 eye report from the hurricane hunters found a 920 mb pressure and flight level winds of 153 knots (176 mph). These numbers plus the satellite intensity estimates support upgrading Rita to a Category 5 hurricane.

There are two hurricane hunter aircraft in Rita this afternoon. The NOAA hurricane hunters found a central pressure of 934 mb at 11:17 am, and the Air Force hurricane hunters found a central pressure of 923 mb at 1:02pm. This incredible drop of 11 mb in 105 minutes is the fastest pressure fall I can ever recall seeing in a hurricane, and exceeds the 10 mb drop in 100 minutes we saw in Hurricane Charley last year. With an eye diameter of 25 miles, an eyewall replacement cycle is not likely today, and Rita may intensify to a level close to Katrina's strongest point--902 mb.

Still two days out from the arms hitting landfall and slowing it down, and over Gulf of Mexico water that is 90degrees. Its only getting bigger and bigger and bigger. There is serious discussion that we may need a new category to label Rita. Category 5e?
A category 6 isnt possible because at that point it stops being a Hurricane and turns into one gigantic tornado.

Maybe this?
http://home.comcast.net/%7Epiotr36/ritapac.jpg

WTF, it was a cat 1 storm when I left this morning.

I had plained to spend the weekend on the lake, but I guess I'm going to be renting a mess of dvds, and hoping the best. At least my grass will turn green again, we havent had any rain in awhile.

Its pretty amazing seeing it intensify like this on the weather channels. Wherever it hits its going to be a mess. Hopefully it doesnt cut up to N.O. again.

Wait a minute...weather.com reports something a little different. Where did you get that report?

http://www.weather.com/newscenter/tropical/?from=wxcenter_news

That's to be expected. The water just on the Western edge of Florida is much warmer than the Atlantic. Hurricanes always intensify when they pass over Florida into the Gulf. The Gulf cools as you head West though. The storm will likely weaken before it hits Texas.

edit: Attached picture. The measure isn't temperature, but it's the heat potential of the area, which is the same thing in terms of fueling a tropical storm.

Matagorda and Galveston are in for some chop, but hurricanes always weaken as they come near the Gulf coast because the water cools dramatically starting at 80-100ish miles out. That being said, the overall warmer Atlantic is definitely going to have long term effects on hurricane frequency and intensity, but "having to come up with a new classification" is just hysteria.

WTF, it was a cat 1 storm when I left this morning.

At 6:00 am cst, it was listed on the news as being Cat 3, and just as I was leaving at 7am cst for work, they broke into the news with an update that it had just made Cat 4. No idea where you heard Cat 1 from, but should not have been any of the major networks.

Just came home for lunch and turned on Fox and they are saying it has been upgraded to Cat 5.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092100243_pf.html


Hurricane Rita's rapid intensification cycle that began Tuesday afternoon continues. Top winds are up to 165 mph, now a category 5 hurricane. Further strengthening is possible as the atmosphere remains favorable for development over the next 24 hours.
www.weatherchannel.com

Aunti Em!!! Aunti Em!!!

Fandros

Lets hope the 3-4 day warning period is enough to get people evacuated because we know whos fault its going to be if they dont....................

2 days ago TWC predicted that Rita would grow to a Cat2 hurricane halfway between FL and TX, where it was expected to make landfall. Suffice to say, Rita exceeded their expectations, rapidly.

Tonight I saw on the weather channel that it is up to 175 mph sustained winds with a pressure of 898. Very scary storm.

Last I heard it had gusts exceeding 213 mph, it doesn't seem like it'll slow down much if at all when it reaches the gulf from what I've read.

http://sirocco.accuweather.com/adc_hurr_images/2005/ar/UHAR_2.GIF

Jesus Christ! :(

yea my mom and sister are atleast trying to get to Austin from Houston, but the freeways are a mess. Up here in Big D we have been told to stock up as we might lose power when this storm gets to us. Which of course caused a panick in my wife which I had to deal with while convincing my mom to leave houston. This thing is big but i doubt it will have the same impact on Houston as K did on NO, there isnt a lake being held back in houston to flood the city.


Rev

A huge storm surge could easily reproduce the flooding of a lake behind a levee. The question is what is the geography of the Texas coast? Is is below or close to sea level? 898 mb is going to suck up a huge amount of water and drag it on shore, thats for sure.

I've heard that every highway leaving Houston is at a standstill as of 11am today, with people having spent 10 hours in their cars only to go 40 miles. The city/state waited too long to open all freeway lanes to outbound traffic. As cars run out of gas (not to mention people needing to use the bathroom, etc), things will only get worse. Good luck to anyone caught in the path of this monster.

Edit: Deleted, good point, Taleren. Off to nuggets!

Nsfw?

Malse left me a voicemail last night (he's in Houston) to the effect of "Wow, this is boring." Something about no one wanting to go out drinking, because of the hurricane.

Hurricane Rita is now downgraded to a category 4.

Having weathered 2 major hurricanes and about to hunker down and ride out a third, I find the reaction kind of interesting. If not for Katrina, people wouldn't be mass evacuating and jamming the freeways, cleaning out the grocery stores and the gas at the gas stations and once the storm passes through and people see it wasn't as bad as they were anticipating (provided it doesn't kick more east and go into Louisiana) I think people will realize they overreacted a little.

I remember the exact opposite reaction to Alicia, it had been so long since a major storm had been through and there were so many new people to the coastal areas who had no idea what even a tropical storm could do, the reaction was pretty ho-hum leading up to. A notable thing about Alicia is you know how hurricane winds blow one way? Strong winds blowing against all the spanking new skyscrapers downtown created low pressure areas on one side, enough to pop out a significant number of window panes to crash down upon the streets below.

Did get groceries pretty cheap, a lot of the perishables were marked down. Interesting what people bought -- water. We're not going to lose the water service in Houston. Bread, lunchmeat, people are making sandwiches? All the milk was gone, all the sausage. All the canned meats. Apples and oranges were pretty much cleared out. Oh and people were buying beer, but not the neat microbrews like I'd buy but mundane beer like Budweiser. I turned the thermostat on the fridge colder as I expect the power will be out. I suppose people buying food supplies could be doing so for while they evacuate but I figure there'll be supplies at their destinations.

I found gas last night tho I don't plan to drive anywhere and probably won't be able to get out anyway due to street flooding. I think the worst part of the hurricane will be boredom -- with the power out, no Internet. /sigh

I did manage to snag some of the last sheets of plywood from Home Depot. Aside from boarding up a few windows I'm going to put my car in the garage (it's still pretty new). S'funny, saw a store that had sheets of plywood against the windows -- on the inside! Didn't see much taping of windows, I wonder if people recommend that anymore.

Trying to motivate myself to bring in my plumerias instead of snuggling them against the house (I have a lot of them -- over 20 in pots). Gonna clear the lawn of any potential missiles, I figure the tornado that passed by our house a couple months ago took care of all the loose branches and unstable trees already (tho I'll be annoyed if the hurricane blows down the new fence).

My daughter informs me the Oasis concert she has tickets for is this Sunday, I expect it'll be cancelled. :/ Relatives from overseas called yesterday and the first thing I said was "are you calling about the hurricane?" They said yes we hear it's going to hit in a few hours, I said try a few days. :p Everyone on EQ I mention it to says "are you evacuating?"

It's sunny outside and very hot, waiting for the storm to blow in and cool things down!

A huge storm surge could easily reproduce the flooding of a lake behind a levee. The question is what is the geography of the Texas coast? Is is below or close to sea level? 898 mb is going to suck up a huge amount of water and drag it on shore, thats for sure.

Galveston is at sea level. Lot of marshy spots around the coast but those areas aren't the developed ones. I expect to see a fair amount of beach erosion. Because of the infamous 1900 hurricane, Galveston has the longest, strongest seawall in the world. Also houses and structures built to withstand hurricane force winds. Many, many of the buildings in Galveston are on stilts, on blocks so they won't get flooded out. There'll be damage but not like New Orleans.

Houston is anywhere from about 30 to 80 feet above sea level. Main problem here is going to be flooding, but again, don't expect it to be like New Orleans. A few years ago we had a freak flood where downtown flooded, the Medical Center flooded, and there was flooding up to 20 feet in some parts (freeway underpasses mostly). That was because it had been raining quite a bit, the ground was saturated, the bayous and sewers were taxed and a storm came in and pushed the water back up the Houston Ship Channel and the bayous so it had nowhere to go. We have had no rain here in over a month, everything is dry, the bayou levels are low, I don't forsee a repeat of that situation.

Edit: Galveston is actually 15 to 20 feet above sea level, one of the things they did in response to the 1900 storm was to dredge out the ship channel and build up the level of the city.

Malse left me a voicemail last night (he's in Houston) to the effect of "Wow, this is boring." Something about no one wanting to go out drinking, because of the hurricane.

I offered but he was like <whinewhine> have to finish stuff at work, etc, etc. His family was calling him all day urging him to evacuate. We were supposed to do something tonight but everything is closed today. So I ended up supplying him with take out sushi and udon. Here's to hoping everything will open back up Monday or Sunday after the hurricane has passed.

We got the last things out of our old condo Wed morning about 2 am, Philip finished cleaning it about 2pm, and we got home to our new house o' boxes last night to find... a message from his mother informing us that two family members from Corpus Christi were headed out our way today for the weekend :).

Since Laredo is the last decent sized town due west of Corpus, we've had several nursing homes and the like already evacuated here; we're going to be housing between 700-100 mostly elderly people in the here on campus this weekend, and a request has gone out for us to volunteer for shifts at the gym.

To those in Houston, et al: Just because the city is above sea level doesn't mean that a storm of this magnitude can't or won't seriously damage large areas of real estate, especially if the eyewall passes over you guys, storm surge or no, and if you've been dry a month, flooding may actually be *worse* than if you had been getting regular rain and the soil was porous. If you are on the north or east side, you will have to endure a much longer period of rainfall and high winds as the storm passes by than the folks who are west or south, so while you may not be as close to the coast, your neighborhood may actually suffer more damage. If it were me, I'd plan on getting out for the weekend just to escape the sea of idiots who try to drive, etc, in that mess as it moves through and to avoid getting injured in case your house is one damaged, and you can always come visit lovely Laredo... ;) Remember, most of the devastation caused by Andrew in Florida some years back (and much of the damage in Mississippi from Katrina) *wasn't* related to storm surge - it was just really high winds, and not over a terribly long period of time, either.

To Londreigh: Taping windows doesn't prevent them from breaking, and so isn't recommended by the Red Cross anymore. Some folks claim that it is supposed to lessen the liklihood of glass shards becoming airborne missiles *after* a window breaks, but it seems of dubious value to me.

I hope everyone gets safely through the weekend, and that Rita passes through with minimal damage; Faervas' family up in Dallas is stocking up and preparing in case they get flooded as the storm is expected to drop piles of rainfall on them (fortunately their house is pier and beam, ~ 1950, and so is elevated above street level).

Regards,
Nydia

Londreigh..as you probably do know Alicia was a Catagory 3....Rita was "just" down graded to a catgory 4..huge difference. People should be scurring out of the city and get as far as inland as they can. Id more worried about the sustained 120+mph winds than water at the moment.

Yes, tape on windows is worthless, unless it covers the entire surface of the glass. By the time you did that and then cleaned it off afterwards, just boarding the window up would've taken less time anyway.

Im in Austin, and people are going crazy here. Went to the store to buy a few things, no bread no batteries, no toilet paper or paper towels. Every type of canned meat was gone, juice whole sections of the store were gone vegies potatoes. Like Lond I got some great deals on meats and frozen goods and Found the last bag of kitty litter, :)


I dont think its going to be that bad here, there just predicting 60-90 mph winds and rain, But they can really damage alot of stuff. I did find cokes at the liquer store and stocked up on beer and vodka. Guess Ill be BBQ'ing and getting toasted if the power goes out.

The lines for gas are insane, glad I filled up on tuesday.

Lots of the locals are panicking and fleeing, went to the local sandwich shop at 2pm today and got the last sandwich they could possibly make. The city is a total ghost town, nearly everything closed last night and what stayed open found themselves short most of their staff. People are talking about 35 hour drives to Dallas or San Antonio.

Only thing I'm worried about is potential damage to my car, I rent an apartment and thus damage there isn't my financial responsibility. My cousin is allegedly surfing in Galveston at this minute. I may end up staying with my uncle in Spring over the weekend, but that's mostly because my aunt is immobile due to recent hip surgey and because Time Warner is the most incompetent cable company in the world and my home internet has been out for a week. Got to have something to do with the local world closed.

It's funny to me how people waffle between the extremes of blissful ignorance and panicking terror, instead of just respecting the storm and planning around it.


Oh, heh, amusing quote from AccuWeather:


The graphic from the National Hurricane Center shows much less confidence in the storm's impact. This product is designed to be used by government and emergency management officials. Their forecast is for less than a 50% chance of hurricane force winds along the coast of northeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. AccuWeather feels this forecast is virtually useless.

Keep your head down folks!!

Fandros

Too lazy to quote tonight.

8pm and I have sweat running down my face from clearing the yard, it's still that hot outside. 90F with a heat index of 95F.

The other hurricane I weathered, was Carla, a class 4. Looking at the damage done by Alicia will give you a better idea of what Rita's going to do, rather than the damage done by Katrina or Andrew or Camille, etc. Even tho we haven't had a major hurricane in over 20 years, we've had numerous tropical storms and depressions make it our way, they blow a little and rain a lot. That frontal system in the middle of the US is still pushing Rita to the east.

The soil here is clay, or what they call gumbo, a mixture of clay and rock. Contributes to the flooding problem as it doesn't like to hold water. The flooding problem is exacerbated by the development - more concrete to cause runoff and less ground to absorb the runoff. From living in this area for the past 40 years, flooding is worse if it's been raining a lot and the bayous are already full of water. The other time I've seen flooding worse is during the fall when the leaves clog up the sewers.

Thank you for your concern but I am inland -- 80 miles inland and about 50 ft above sea level. Flooding is the main concern where I live, by the time the hurricane gets to us, its winds are projected to be around 70mph or less. To my knowledge, my house won't flood, but there'll be a lot of street flooding all around. If I lived in Galveston or one of the coastal cities like La Porte or League City, sure I'd move further inland, but I don't see the need where I am (pull up maps.google.com, I live near Sugar Land).

Love tomorrow's Houston weather forecast:

Very windy with rain...a thunderstorm or two as well. Humid. High 82F. NW winds at 50 to 70 mph, diminishing to 25 to 40 mph. Rainfall possibly over two inches.

(possibly gonna get a lot more rain than that, the storm is moving very slowly and it looks like it may stall over Texas - lots of interesting looking clouds outside at the moment ....)

Edit: for the record, Nick is absolutely right, it is amazingly boring waiting for this storm to come in. The news I'm seeing/reading is no longer about the storm but about the reaction to the storm and it's the media that's whipping up the hysteria. I do hope the neighbor is wrong about the rumour he told us that they were going to cut off the city water service (why on earth would they do that??!!). I've seen absolutely nothing about the high pressure cell over Arkansas that is probably going to stall the system over Texas in which it'll probably dump 2 or 3 dozen inches of rain upon us. The storm is moving so slowly now I could probably walk faster than it's going !!!!

More petro fallout.

http://www.pannexresearch.com/rita/tx-oil.php

(By the way: I told you so about it weakening a lot before landfall)

Although Rita is a category 2 it still managed to reflood some or most of New Orleans.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170213,00.html

N.O. should think about imitating Galveston, TX's 17-foot granite seawall, heh.

The hurricane mostly missed us. Not sure why they used Katrina as the disaster model for Houston since Houston isn't anything remotely like New Orleans. Galveston isn't anything remotely like New Orleans. It's not like we've never been brushed by a hurricane, tropical storm or tropical depression before (Tropical Storm Allison was the system that pushed the water up the Ship Channel and flooded out the city 4 years ago that I mentioned in an earlier post). All those refineries have been there for decades and have withstood assault from many storm systems. (but you know, when Alicia blew in, gas was only 85 cents a gallon.)

I guess the media has to whip up everyone in a frenzy so they'll have something interesting to report. I was reading about people complaining that the evacutation plans were bad, and poor people complaining that they had no means to evacuate. The only people that need to evacuate are those that live on the coast, in low-lying flood prone areas and who live in trailers. Why they insisted on evacuating a city of 3.5 million people that lies 50 miles inland is kind of beyond me. If not for all the hysteria, things would be getting back to normal today, eveything would be opening, there'd be food in the stores (but no bottled water, that always sells out prior to a hurricane threat), gas at the stations, no curfew, no ghost town. It's all really kind of stupid, I think.

I'm not surprised the storm weakened so much and went ashore to the east of us, there was a cold front pushing it east and that high pressure cell weakening it. I'd rather the news had been a bit more pragmatic and mentioned this rather than go on with the doom and gloom forecasting. I really hope the people who sat in traffic not moving for hours and hours will reassess doing it again. Was out driving around yesterday before the storm made landfall and there are abandoned cars all over the freeways. Gonna head out in a bit to see if I can find a convenience storm open.

Just went outside to check the damage, 2 small tree limbs down in the front, it's very breezy. Very little rain, drat, we needed more rain, it was so dry.

As far as building a seawall like the one in Galveston for New Orleans .... Every time I'm in Galveston, I marvel at the seawall, it truly is a wonder to behold. It's not just 17 feet tall, it's also 16 feet deep and something like 10 miles long. I can't picture them building anything like that in New Orleans, the cost would be prohibitive. If you've been following the politics of the situation, the Corps of Engineers had been doing improvements on their levee system and there'd been cuts in budget and shortcuts in the building techniques and finger pointing and stuff. People have been predicting the levees would fail and flood out New Orleans for literally decades. But whatever.

Edit: didn't find a convenience store open, but found a liquor store! Was fine with me since it was beer I was after. :) There were a lot of cars driving around and people coming out in droves the short time I was driving around. Saw a few OPEN signs come on, looks like things are starting to get back to normal.