Hurricane Rita now Cat. 5: is Texas next?

[chicagogeorge]

Rita is now stronger than Katrina. Maximum sustained winds 176mph!

[PostOak5115]

It took my family 7 hrs to leave Houston today and get to the weekend house and my house in northeast TX. My aunt and uncle are on a cruise in Canada and in NYC, they just told my cousins just get the valuable antiques,paintings and family photos. Thankfully, they do have flood and wind insurance. This storm is very scary, even for people living well inland in Houston. This will cause oil to skyrocket

[rantanamo]

for those saying this won't be an NO, don't forget the devastation from the category 4 storm surge and winds on the coastal areas of Lousiana, Mississippi and Alabama, which was absolutely devastating, though we tend to concentrate on NO. This is the kind of thing I worry about for whatever area is hit. Plus places like Houston and Dallas can flood big time with less rain than this thing will dump. Please don't downplay even if this thing hits at cat. 3

[great prairie]

Lubbock will probably get alot of rain from this and it is practically a desert out here, the city doesn't have a gutter system so rain water just kinda sits around.

I work at a hotel in Lubbock(currently at work) almost every hotel in town is soldout. The phone rings about every 2 minutes with someone looking for a room. Houston is roughly an 8-9 drive from here... 3 phone calls while I am typing this

[mvasquez]

What most people think of as the devestation of Katrina in New Orleans was from the levees failing and the lake draining out onto the city, not from the power of Katrina.

Even with that.. New Orleans got off very lightly compared to what happened to Galveston in 1900... it's usually called The Storm. It wreaked devestation and left a trail of death throughout the US and even caused flooding and death in Canada.

There were a lot of insanely bad storms in the late 1800's too, several Texas cities were completely wiped out in the 1800's and were never rebuilt cuz everyone died and nothing was left.

[mvasquez]

Most of Houston sits at an altitude of 'sea level'. The highest point is in the Heights, 83 ft. The mark has recently changed to 120+ ft.. I have no idea where that is.

Southeast Houston is right along Galveston Bay and the Ship Channel.

most of eastern Galveston is approx. 17 ft above sea level. that part of the island was dug up and literally raised 17 ft after the storm of 1900 in order to create what is known as the sea wall. the western part of the island is unprotected and sits at sea level. This part of the Galveston is expected to be completely leveled with little or no structures standing after Rita passes through.

[Pobbie]

Seriously, if Galveston takes a direct hit again it will be another catastrophe. Less people may die this time round, but if anything the city's structures will suffer more damage than NO.

[samsonyuen]

That's horrible, especially with Houston housing so many of the evacuees from NO.

[great prairie]

anyone watching the news traffic on 59, 45, 290, and 10 is awful going out of town. The graphic says 100 miles of congestion. The freeways are enormus they are letting people drive on the shoulders, 7+ lanes going 10 miles an hour....

[Azn_chi_boi]

Any live news reports? Like the one in New Orleans a month ago.

[great prairie]

CNN or Fox is live

[PotatoGuy]

It's a category 4... wheres the fun in that?

[Expat]

Good luck down there. Everybody is worried about you guys. Take care.

[scando]

Fortunately it's down to a category 3 now; bad but not nearly as fearsome as the 5 that it was. Wind force exerted against buildings approximately doubles with each 10 MPH increase so the diffence in wind force between the 175 that it was the the 120 that it is now could mean the difference between a house that is damaged and one that is entirely gone. It's also veered somewhat to the right so the eye wall will be east of the most populated areas aound Houston and Galveston. Probably real bad but not as catastophic as it could have been.

[Talbot]

yeah, thank god that it did pass us all up in Houston, but bad for New Orleans and Beaumont. Though I am worried that if something did come along again that could be potentially dangerous that people wouldn't leave because this one bypassed us and they wouldnt want to wait in all that traffic for nothing.

And man, that traffic was crazy. I went on I-10 and they had contra flow, people were driving on the shoulder, the access road and in the grass. People had broken down cars and cars without gas all along the freeways, there was no gas anywhere, and I personally had to sit in traffic for 13 hours going to San Antonio, which usually takes only about 2 to 3 hours.

[dwrecker]

I drove 20 hours from Houston to Dallas. I-45 was the longest parking lot from Galveston to Conroe. NEVER have I experienced so much traffic in my life. It took me 12 hours from Houston to Conroe and an hour from Conroe to Huntsville. By the time I got to Huntsville, they did the contra-flow and opened up the southbound side of I-45 coming into Houston for traffic to travel north to Buffalo, Texas where traffic had to get back on the northbound side which was another hour I was sittin still. And by the time I got to Dallas, I was in 5 o clock traffic on 75. Good thing Rita did not threaten us besides the fact Houston loss power and a few blown out windows downtown. Beaumont was damaged severly, which is where I go to school. Lamar Univ. is damaged pretty bad and we wont have school maybe at a going rate of a month or so from the way things look there. Dallas had sunshine the whole time I was there no rain or anything. Cant believe its been a week already since I evacuated.

[sequoias]

keep in mind, a category 5 (155 mph+ winds or more) hurricane making a landfall will rip a house off the foundation and nothing is left standing. A hurricane with 120 mph winds will damage house, breaking roofs, comestic damage to it, and things like that.