Official "Rita" thread!

DDuckFan130

Well-Known Member
stranger said:
Where in Texas are you? My aunt lives in Houston and she's not taking any chances with Rita, especially after recent events, it doesn't pay to take chances. So she is currently on her way here to California, but my uncle is staying. :(
Is your uncle staying for work reasons like Paul?

My aunt who had to evacuate New Orleans to Houston had gone back home because her area is right outside NO. But I think she had gone back to Houston this weekend. I guess it's time to either go to L.A. or head somewhere else with family.
 

stranger

New Member
DDuckFan130 said:
Is your uncle staying for work reasons like Paul?

My aunt who had to evacuate New Orleans to Houston had gone back home because her area is right outside NO. But I think she had gone back to Houston this weekend. I guess it's time to either go to L.A. or head somewhere else with family.


Auroa_25, stay safe! :wave:
Reg, sounds like a good plan if your aunt heads out with family away from the Gulf.
And yes, my uncle is staying for work. He owns a small business and many of his employees will be sticking it out, so he doesn’t want to leave them behind.
 

Tim G

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
at200519_sat.jpg


Hurricane Rita Quickly Reaches
Category 4 Strength


UPDATED: 11:05 am EDT September 21, 2005
Name: Hurricane Rita
Location: About 260 Miles, West of Key West Florida And About 755 Miles East-Southeast Of Corpus Christi Texas.
Lat/Long: 24.3N, 85.9W
Max Winds: 140 mph
Category: 4
Heading: West
Speed: 13 mph
Pressure: 27.88 inches


KEY WEST, Fla. - Hurricane Rita grew into a Category 4 storm Wednesday, as forecasters said its winds have reached 140 mph as its churns toward landfall later this week on the Gulf Coast.

Mandatory evacuations have already been ordered for New Orleans and Galveston, Texas, one day after Rita skirted past the Florida Keys as a Category 2 storm, causing minimal damage.

Hurricane Rita at 7:15am on Wednesday, September 21.

Federal officials told Gulf Coast residents to begin bracing for a blockbuster storm. "Up and down the coastline, people are now preparing for what is anticipated to be another significant storm," President Bush said.

Rita's top sustained winds of 140 mph were up 25 mph from the morning.

Chris Landsea, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said Rita is expected to remain a Category 4 storm until it makes landfall.
That's now predicted for Saturday somewhere between northern Mexico and western Louisiana, most likely in Texas.

"But our ability to forecast wind speed is limited," Landsea said. He said Rita could strengthen into a Category 5 storm with winds in excess of 155 mph or go back to a Category 3 with winds of less than 130 mph.

Acting FEMA Director R. David Paulison told reporters that the agency has aircraft and buses available to evacuate residents of areas the hurricane might hit. Rescue teams and truckloads of ice, water and prepared meals were being sent to Texas.

"I strongly urge Gulf coast residents to pay attention" to the storm, he said.

Stung by criticism of the government's slow initial response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush signed an emergency declaration for Florida and spoke with Texas Gov. Rick Perry about planning for the storm's landfall.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the federal government is ready to help and has learned a lot from its Katrina mistakes.
 

DDuckFan130

Well-Known Member
stranger said:
Auroa_25, stay safe! :wave:
Reg, sounds like a good plan if your aunt heads out with family away from the Gulf.
And yes, my uncle is staying for work. He owns a small business and many of his employees will be sticking it out, so he doesn’t want to leave them behind.
Well hopefully it won't be too bad and he'll be fine. :)

Yeah, I need to ask my mom what my aunt is doing. Her mom (who evacuated with her to Houston for Katrina) is here so she got to experience a "hurricane" first-hand :lol: When my aunt went back home, she said there was 1 foot of water so everything on the floor was pretty much messed up: shoes, feet of furniture, etc. She went back to Houston I'm assuming to get out of NO for a while. She was here too but I don't think she'll come back here right now. So L.A. would be her best bet since her sisters are there.
 

Woody13

New Member
Wtnt63 Knhc 211955
Tcuat3
Hurricane Rita Tropical Cyclone Update
Nws Tpc/national Hurricane Center Miami Fl
255 Pm Cdt Wed Sep 21 2005

Data From Reconnaissance Aircraft Indicate That Rita Has Reached
Category Five Intensity With Estimated Maximum Sustained Surface
Winds Of 165 Mph. This Will Be Reflected In The 4 Pm Cdt Advisory.

Forecaster Avila
 

diddy_mouse

Well-Known Member
I hope everyone will stay safe and be careful. This has been a scary hurricane season....and thanx to Corrus for the weather updates
 

Disnut

Member
We are supposed to get high winds and rain on Sat. depending on which way it goes. I am a little worried about it. Not worried about flooding at my house we are high enough. Never has flooded here at my house before. But I am worried about the wind.
 

Tim G

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Hurricane Rita Grows
To Category-5 Monster !!!


UPDATED: 6:10 pm EDT September 21, 2005


GALVESTON, Texas - As many as 1 million people were ordered to clear out along the Gulf Coast, and hospital and nursing home patients were evacuated Wednesday as Hurricane Rita turned into a Category-5, 165-mph monster that could slam Texas by the weekend and inflict more misery on New Orleans.

Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and easily one of the most powerful ever to plow into the U.S. mainland.
Category 5 is the highest on the scale, and only three Category 5 hurricanes are known to have hit the U.S. mainland, most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

Hurricane Rita at 2:45pm on Wednesday, September 21.

All of Galveston, low-lying sections of Houston and Corpus Christi, and a mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders, one day after Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys as a far weaker storm and caused minor damage.

Having seen what Hurricane Katrina, a Category-4, 145-mph storm, did three weeks ago, many people were taking no chances as Rita swirled across the Gulf of Mexico.

"After this killer in New Orleans, Katrina, I just cannot fathom staying," 59-year-old Ldyyan Jean Jocque said before sunrise as she waited for an evacuation bus outside the Galveston Community Center. She had packed her Bible, some music and clothes into plastic bags and loaded her dog into a pet carrier.

"I really think it is going to be bad. That's really why I'm running.
All these years I've stayed here, but I've got to go this time," said 65-year-old Barbara Anders, "I don't have but one life, and it is time for me to go."

The federal government was eager to show it, too, had learned its lesson after being criticized for its sluggish response to Katrina. It rushed hundreds of truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals to the Gulf Coast and put rescue and medical teams on standby.

"You can't play around with this storm," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on ABC's "Good Morning America." He added: "The lesson is that when the storm hits, the best place to be is to be out of the path of the storm."

By early afternoon, Rita was centered more than 700 miles southeast of Corpus Christi, drawing strength from the warm waters of the gulf.
Forecasters predicted it would come ashore Saturday along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi. But even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to New Orleans.

Altogether, as many as 1 million people in the Houston-Galveston area were under orders to get out, including all of Galveston County, population 267,000, authorities said.
About 10,000 people in vulnerable sections of Corpus Christi were also warned to get out. Along the Louisiana coast, some 20,000 people or more were being evacuated or were told to leave.

Galveston, situated on an island 8 feet above sea level, was the site of one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history: an unnamed hurricane in 1900 that killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people and practically wiped the city off the map.

The last major hurricane to hit Texas was Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.
The damage from the Category 3 storm was put at more than $2 billion. Tropical Storm Allison flooded Houston in 2001, doing major damage to hospitals and research centers and killing 23 people.

"Let's hope that the hurricane does not hit at a Category 4 strength and let's hope the lessons we've learned, the painful, tragic lessons that have been learned in the last few weeks will best prepare us for what could happen with Rita," Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu said in New York.

The death toll from Katrina along the Gulf Coast climbed past 1,000 Wednesday to 1,036.
The body count in Louisiana alone was put at 799 by the state Health Department.

In New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers raced to patch the city's fractured levee system for fear the additional rain from Rita could swamp the walls and flood the city all over again.
The Corps said New Orleans' levees can only handle up to 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.

"The protection is very tenuous at best," said Dave Wurtzel, a Corps official handling some of the repairs.

Engineers and contractors drove a massive metal barrier across the 17th Street Canal bed to prevent a storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain from swamping New Orleans again, and worked around the clock to repair the damaged pumps, concrete floodwalls, earthen berms and channels that protect the below-sea-level city.

In addition, the corps had 800 giant sandbags of 6,000 to 15,000 pounds each on hand, and ordered 2,500 more to shore up low spots and plug any new breaches.

The federal government's top official in the city, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, said the preparations in and around New Orleans included 500 buses for evacuation, and enough water and military meals for 500,000 people.

Buses stood by at the city's convention center to evacuate the 400 to 500 residents Mayor Ray Nagin estimated were left in the main part of the city, on the east bank of the Mississippi River.
Two busloads left on Tuesday. But almost no one showed up Wednesday morning.

"The majority of people who are back in the city came with their own vehicle. We expect them to go out in their own vehicle," said Spc. Amber Mangham, a military police officer at the convention center.

The evacuation order meant that for the second time in 3 1/2 weeks, many New Orleans residents were forced to decide whether to stay or go.
Also, many Katrina victims still in shelters faced the prospect of being uprooted again.
At the Cajun Dome in Lafayette, emergency officials arranged to take the 1,000 refugees from the New Orleans area out on buses if Rita tracks north.

"I don't think I can stay for another storm," said Keith Price, a nurse at New Orleans' University Hospital who stayed through Katrina and had to wade several miles through chest-deep water to reach a friend's apartment on higher ground. "Until you are actually in that water, you really don't know how frightening it is."

Along the Texas coast, authorities rushed to get the old and infirm out of harm's way, three weeks after scores of sick and elderly nursing home patients in the New Orleans area drowned in Katrina's floodwaters or died in the stifling heat while waiting to be rescued.

In Galveston, the Edgewater Retirement Community, a six-story building near the city's seawall, began evacuating its more than 200 nursing home patients and retirees by bus and ambulance.

"They either go with a family member or they go with us, but this building is not safe sitting on the seawall with a major hurricane coming," said David Hastings, executive director, "I have had several say, `I don't want to go,' and I said, `I'm sorry, you're going."'

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston discharged 200 hospital patients healthy enough to go home and evacuated others by helicopter, ambulance and buses.
"There are going to be some people who are too sick to evacuate and we are going to keep them here," said spokeswoman Jennifer Reynolds-Sanchez.

About 80 buses began leaving Galveston at midmorning, bound for shelters 100 miles north in Huntsville. Dozens of people lined up, carrying pillows, bags and coolers, to board one of several yellow school buses in the city of 58,000.

"The real lesson (from Katrina) that I think the citizens learned is that the people in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi did not leave in time," said Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. "We've always asked people to leave earlier, but because of Katrina, they are now listening to us and they're leaving."

Rita, based on its current internal pressure, would be the most intense hurricane ever to strike Texas, stronger even than an unnamed storm that hit Indianola in 1886.
Accurate wind speed measurements are not available that far back.

The three Category 5 hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland are the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane, Camille in 1969 and Andrew in 1992.

Never before has the mainland been hit by two storms of Category 4 or higher in the same year, according to government forecasters.

Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would smash into key oil isntallations 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.

As Rita swirled away from Florida, thousands of residents who evacuated the Keys began returning to find that the storm had caused little more than minor flooding.
Crews worked to restore electricity, store owners pulled the plywood off windows on the main drag, Duval Street, and seaweed and sand were cleared from the streets.

"I'm turning on the A/C and putting a vacancy sign up. We're really lucky," said Mona Santiago, owner of the Southernmost Point Guest House, as she swept water off the front porch.
"The sun is coming out. We're getting ready for business."

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.
 

Tim G

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
STORM STATUS


Name: Hurricane Rita
Location: About 600 Miles East-Southeast of Galveston Texas And About 700 Miles East-Southeast Of Corpus Christi Texas.
Lat/Long: 24.4N, 86.8W
Max Winds: 165 mph
Category: 5
Heading: West
Speed: 13 mph
Pressure: 26.99 inches

5003315_400X300.jpg
5003078_400X300.jpg
 

Tim G

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Louisiana Governor Declares State Of Emergency

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has declared a state of emergency.

Engineers have warned that even a glancing blow to New Orleans and 6 inches of rain could swamp the city's levees.

Gov. Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin are strongly urging people along the Louisiana coast to be prepared to get out. Nagin said Rita could be "equally dangerous" to New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina, and added the city appears to be on the storm's "wet side."
Any storm surge, he said, could overwhelm the levees and flood the city again.

New Orleans is requesting 200 buses to help in a possible evacuation. Residents who have returned have been told to be ready to evacuate again.
The buses would start running 48 hours before landfall from the downtown convention center and a stadium in Algiers.

Forecasters at the hurricane center said there's only a 5 percent chance Rita could bring hurricane-force winds back to New Orleans.
 

Tim G

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Rita Named Fifth Most-Powerful Hurricane On Record


Storm Carries Winds Of 165 MPH


Hurricane Watch Issued


UPDATED: 6:57 pm EDT September 21, 2005


HOUSTON -Hurricane Rita is now a top-of-the-scale Category 5 storm, packing winds of 165 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Forecasters said the storm could be the most intense hurricane on record to ever hit Texas.

There's also concern that Rita, still about two days away from the Gulf Coast, could turn out to be one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the U.S. mainland.

A hurricane watch has been issued from Port Mansfield, Texas, to Cameron, La., and a tropical storm watch has been issued for east of Cameron to Grand Isle, La., and from south of Port Mansfield to Brownsville, Texas. A tropical storm watch is also in effect for the northeast coast of Mexico from Rio San Fernando northward.

Mandatory evacuation orders currently cover all of Galveston, Texas, low-lying sections of Houston and Corpus Christi, and a mostly empty New Orleans. In all, about 1 million people along the Gulf Coast have been told to get moving.

The hurricane is expected to make landfall along the central Texas coast sometime Saturday, but even a slight turn to the right could deal a devastating blow to New Orleans.

The storm is causing more jitters among those who saw what Katrina and its 145 mph winds did to the Gulf Coast. With Rita about two days away, thousands of Texas coast residents are getting out while the getting is good.

In Galveston, buses bound for inland shelters have already begun transporting the elderly and others needing help.
Able-bodied residents of Galveston must start leaving by 6 p.m., though authorities suggest there's no reason to wait.
 

that_L_do_pig

New Member
grrrr... Native Houstonian here of 35 years. This one will top 1983. I live in far enough NW Houston to not vacate but the wind will be crazy!

I have moved all loose items to the inside and stocked up with supplies.

Good thing I have all my parks music on CD for when the power/internet goes out...

'It's a world of laughter...'
 

DDuckFan130

Well-Known Member
that_L_do_pig said:
grrrr... Native Houstonian here of 35 years. This one will top 1983. I live in far enough NW Houston to not vacate but the wind will be crazy!

I have moved all loose items to the inside and stocked up with supplies.

Good thing I have all my parks music on CD for when the power/internet goes out...

'It's a world of laughter...'
Take care and stay safe :wave:
 

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