This article says hurricane Rita has lost some of its strength.
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/arti...00010000000001
So, maybe when it hits the water that's not so deep and warm, (like in the middle of the Gulf), it will lose even
more power and steam and not cause so much damage and tragedy.
Quote:
Monster Storm Swirls Toward Gulf Coast
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL
GALVESTON, Texas (Sept. 22) - Traffic came to a standstill and gas shortages were reported Thursday as hundreds of thousands of people in the Houston metropolitan area rushed to get out of the path of Hurricane Rita, a monster storm with 170 mph winds.
More than 1.3 million residents in Texas and Louisiana were under orders to get out to avoid a deadly repeat of Katrina.
The Category 5 storm weakened slightly Thursday morning, and forecasters said it could be down to a Category 3 -- meaning winds as high as 130 mph -- by the time it comes ashore late Friday or early Saturday. But it could still be a dangerous storm.
"Don't follow the example of Katrina and wait. No one will come and get you during the storm," said Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said.
Highways leading inland out of Houston were gridlocked, with traffic bumper-to-bumper for up to 100 miles north of the city. Gas stations were reported to be running out of gas. Shoppers emptied grocery store shelves of spaghetti, tuna and other nonperishable items.
To speed the evacuation out of the nation's fourth-largest city, Gov. Rick Perry halted all southbound traffic into Houston along Interstate 45 and took the unprecedented stop of opening all eight lanes to northbound traffic out of the city for 125 miles. I-45 is the primary evacuation route north from Houston and Galveston.
Police officers along the highways carried gasoline to help people get out of town.
At 8 a.m. EDT, Rita was centered about 490 miles southeast of Galveston and was moving at near 9 mph. It winds were 170 mph, down slightly from 175 mph earlier in the day. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi, with up to 15 inches of rain in places.
Hurricane-force winds extended up to 70 miles from the center of the storm, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans.
"Now is not a time for warnings. Now is a time for action," Houston Mayor Bill White said.
He added: "There is no good place to put a shelter that could take a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane. I don't want anybody out there watching this and thinking that somebody is bound to open a local school for me on Friday, not with a hurricane packing these kinds of winds."
The U.S. mainland has never been hit by both a Category 4 and a Category 5 in the same season. Katrina at one point became a Category 5 storm, but weakened slightly to a Category 4 just before coming ashore.
In the Galveston-Houston-Corpus Christi area, about 1.3 million people were under orders to get out, in addition to 20,000 or more along with the Louisiana coast. Special attention was given to hospitals and nursing homes, three weeks after scores of sick and elderly patients in the New Orleans area drowned in Katrina's floodwaters or died in the stifling heat while waiting to be rescued.
Galveston was already a virtual ghost town. The city's lone hospital was evacuated along with residents of a six-story retirement home.
The coastal city of 58,000 on an island 8 feet above sea level was nearly wiped off the map in 1900 when an unnamed hurricane killed between 6,000 and 12,000. It remains the nation's worst natural disaster.
City Manager Steve LeBlanc said the storm surge could reach 50 feet. Galveston is protected by a seawall that is only 17 feet tall.
"Not a good picture for us," LeBlanc said.
In Houston, the state's largest city and home to the highest concentration of Katrina refugees, geography makes evacuation particularly tricky. While many hurricane-prone cities are right on the coast, Houston is 60 miles inland, so a coastal suburban area of 2 million people must evacuate through a metropolitan area of 4 million people where the freeways are often clogged under the best of circumstances.
By late Wednesday, the blinking taillights of motorists headed north from Houston could be seen from planes landing at Houston's William P. Hobby Airport on the south side of the city. All routes leading north and west were jammed with vehicles.
A family of three, two children in wheelchairs, and a tired-looking woman in hospital scrubs sat in a darkened and deserted bus stop just off Interstate 610, waiting for a ride.
Galveston's mayor said buses used to take people and their pets off the island were running in short supply Wednesday and warned that stragglers could be left to fend for themselves.
Meanwhile, the death toll from Katrina passed the 1,000 mark Wednesday in five Gulf Coast states. The body count in Louisiana alone was put at nearly 800, most found in the receding floodwaters of New Orleans.
Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would destroy key oil installations in Texas and the gulf. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25 percent of the nation's total oil output.
Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. The hurricane season is not over until Nov. 30.
Jennifer McDonald in Galveston planned to ride Rita out. She and her husband have enough food and water to last 10 days in their wooden house. If it gets really bad, the couple will take to the roof.
"If it goes, it goes," the 42-year-old nurse said of the house. "We're completely prepared."
9/22/2005 09:23:24
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I was with a friend of mine last night who runs a towing service.
He had a service call come in while I was there.
It seems a senior gentlemen was fleeing from the hurricane, doing about 80 mph, when he plowed into the back of a family of four's fleeing car.
Luckily no one was seriously injured.
I mention this because it talks about the bad traffic in the article.
It's bad here too, but we're 200 some odd miles from Houston. So the traffic
there must be beyond horrible.