We’ve hit the 18th letter of the alphabet? Jeez, what a year for named storms, this being the 4th busiest since 1851 when they started keeping records. Worse, what a year for BIG named storms and not just in the Atlantic and Gulf but around the world.
Now the Florida Keys are enduring conditions similar to what they faced with Katrina and Rita in similar fashion is expected to then move into the warm Gulf waters and gain strength. It only takes water temps of 78 F to sustain a hurricane. They’re now at 90. New Orleans’ mayor has retracted his premature call for residents to hurridly return and the thought of this storm hitting that city’s already weakened levees is enough to turn anyone’s stomach.
Should Rita miss the Louisiana coast to the south as is currently predicted, it’s still going to wreak havoc with oil installations across the area, further disrupting operations and potentially exacerbating an already tenuous suppy situation. Worse case, it’ll have an effect on facilities around Texas City, something we’d feel the effects of for a very long time.
Houston is near the expected landfall and while they’re not as susceptible to winds and surge as was New Orleans, it nevertheless could be calamitous. It is at this early date well within the crosshairs of where Rita is expected to make landfall. Galveston has already begun a voluntary evacuation.
This one bears watching and of the many outcomes possibile, few right now look real appealing.
And well you should. Recent storms have, if nothing else, taught us that you ignore them at your own peril. It’s not being kneejerkish or overreactionary, simply prudent. Good time to check your supply of flashlight batteries, have containers to store plenty of water and have an evacuation route worked out just in case.
Btw, we have Philippe harmlessly out in the Atlantic but skipped a “Q”, making Rita number 17. The record if I recall correctly is 21 for any single year.
I was worried about Rita yesterday. I don’t believe NO needs a direct hit to be really screwed, just a bunch of rain from the outside edge will work wonders to freshen up the town.
I was wondering how big an oil town Houston is? That’s just what we need: lose the facilities in NO and then cripple or temporatily interrupt another oil port.
My brother is in Houston. He’s planning to bail if it beelines for there. What I’m wondering about is all the refugees from New Orleans that they moved there. What are they going to do with them?
No kidding. "Welcome to the Houston Astrodome…um, the busses are parked just outside to take you to Seattle. They have a football stadium there they don’t seem to need.
John, I remember Alecia well, what with all the flying glass downtown. Remember too Allison, 22 dead, massive flooding… and it was only a tropical storm. (Btw, I’m just north of you in Cypress.) Last night our local forecaster, CBS, was predicting this will maybe be a Cat 4 by the time it gets here.
Inigo, as Ponder mentions, there’s enormous oil activity here, both in the exploration and production sense or “upstream and down”. The whole spectrum might be impacted, from concept all the way to deliverable product. You’ve also got the Port of Houston that’s currently taking a lot of the shipping once managed by New Orleans until they can recover. Take both these operations out and the losses will be huge.
Tupug, yeah, that’s a heartbreaker isn’t it? Last thing those people need to be told now is that they’re being relocated again. I believe there’s only about 1400 or so remaining in the Reliant Arena and GRB but even those assimilated into the community already will be affected.
Gulf Coast shrimping and fishing operations were already under assault by the dumping of cheap product from Asia. Many were about to go under even before Katrina hit. This summer could easily be the biggest blow that industry has ever faced. Would they ever recover?
I know it’s several days out and the path is nowhere near certain. Still, that they predicted for Katrina was eerily accurate.
Well, with the elimination of a significant portion of the shrimping/fishing fleet I’m guessing the gulf dinner species might have a brief period of recovery. It’d be nice. But I wonder what effect the NO polution will have on the critters.
Must be records in English. There used to be this nice old gent who hung around the main library of the University of Miami; he’d been a metereologist down in Cuba and had obtained a grant to study the history of hurricanes. I hope he’s still there, but probably not, given how old he was.
All of it.
When he saw the conditions for the grant, he’d called back the university, saying “I think this can’t be right, it says I’ll get XYZ$/month while I do this work I sent you a proposal for, but it doesn’t say for how long”. “Just as long as it takes, sir.” Oooooo-k…
Written records began before 1500 in what’s now the Dominican Republic. Boy, were the grantgivers surprised!
Right now, the Galveston-Houston area is in the “sweet spot”. For a hurricane coming on shore near Matagorda Bay, that puts the northeast quadrant right over us. A direct hit is bad enough, as evidenced by Alicia. But if Rita comes in where they are saying, we’ll get the storm surge into Galveston Bay and up the Ship Channel and back into the bayou system, and we will have some seriously bad flooding.
It needs to move at least 25 miles either side of where the projected on shore point currently is.
When it’s all over with, I think we should call for a HouDope. We haven’t had one in a while, and the only good thing one can say about a hurricane in these parts is that it will blow the mosquitoes and the smog away.
I was stranded, of all places, in New Orleans during Allison. Raining hard enough to shut down the airport and miss connections, but they didn’t get near the flooding as Houston. Was about halfway through a series of excursions to the Marathon Refinery in Garyville. Tough gig, going to NO every couple of weeks
Duke, if there’s one story from Allison that made an impression on me, it was that of the poor woman who took the elevator down into the parking garage to get her car. Unbeknownst to her, the garage was already flooded and so too became her elevator car on the way down.
From what I understand, if Rita moves quickly through the Gulf, chances are it’ll make landfall more to the west, maybe around Corpus or so. If it slows down then it’ll probably hit further east.
Hurricane supply kit:
§ At least a three-day supply of canned or packaged, non-perishable food.
§ Enough water to supply each person with one gallon per day. Also fill bathtub and other containers.
§ First-aid kit
§ Bleach (without lemon or any other additives)
§ Extra prescription medicine
§ Plywood boards to board up windows
§ Lantern
§ Fuel
§ Fire extinguisher
§ Battery-operated radio
§ Flashlights
§ Extra batteries
§ Toiletries
§ Can opener (non-electric)
§ Eating utensils
§ Matches
§ Emergency cooking facilities
§ Baby food, diapers and formula if applicable
§ Portable cooler
§ Mosquito repellent
I’m in Houston. Fortunately I live and work on the west side of town so I probably won’t see the worst of whatever hits. I survived Allison ok a few years ago; my sister and I spent the night in my car in a movie theater parking lot that turned into an island in the time it took for us to get there and see Evolution, which wasn’t even very good. We were very lucky though; just a mile or so down I-10 there were tanker trucks floating down the freeway.
My great-grandparents (ages 88 and 84, and my great-grandmother has severe Alzheimers-related dementia) live in an assisted living facility that is planning to evacuate their residents to Austin or Dallas if the families of the residents can’t take them in. I’m trying to convince my mother that she should let them go out of town where they’ll skip the storm entirely; my parents are in no shape to deal with them at home, especially if they’re without power for days.
My husband manages a store in the Clear Lake area (southeast of town, where there’s a genuine threat and they’re already closing schools and calling for evacuations). Hopefully they’ll just shut down the store for a few days. It’s not like there will be much business after the place is evacuated.
My office is working on a disaster plan, but if anything happens in the immediate area (Stafford, to the extreme southwest of town) it’ll probably just be loss of power, broken windows, or street flooding that prevents us from getting to the building.
I’m going to the store tonight to stock up on batteries and bottled water. Stupid hurricane, all dangerous and incredibly inconvenient.
What happened to all the other letters of the alphabet? Or did they all blow out at sea?
One other tip to add to Lieu’s impressive list - try to make sure the food can be eaten without cooking. If things go bad then you might be without any way to heat up dried food.
My aunt and uncle live in a mobile home in Conroe, Texas, about 90 miles inland from Galveston (maybe more – I’m relying on online maps at this point). I’m hoping the distance will be enough to protect them, but I’m afraid they’ll end up losing everything.
Houston is my hometown - I’m keeping tabs with my peeps in Houston on this one.