Hurricane Rita - what would you do if ...

[Elton]

Good luck, Hillbilly. Hope all goes well for your daughter and her family.

[RED HILLBILLY]

Elton:

Good luck, Hillbilly. Hope all goes well for your daughter and her family.

Thank you, Elton. What are you doing up at this time of the night? We managed to contact our daughter on the phone a few minutes ago. She had just finished her shift at the hospital and she said it was pandemodium there with poeple being brought in from the highways suffering from heatstroke and carbon-monoxide poisoning. At least one has died, so it was perhaps a good descision to stay put. The authorities have told them it won't be has bad as at first thought with winds only reaching 50 mph or so, but I'm not too sure. We expect we won't be able to contact her when the storm hits but she has promised to phone us as soon as she can. I'll keep you a ll posted.

 

Hillbilly.

[Newt]

A bunch of good news in this for your daughter Red.

 

- Katy, Texas is at 46 meters above sea level and the land slopes down steadily from there to the Gulf of Mexico. The worst storm surge predictions I've seen are well below that height so almost impossible that surge will reach Katy and flood the town.

 

- Any amounts of rain after the storm makes landfall will have plenty of place to drain.

 

- As of right now, the track looks likely to make landfall to the east of Hoston and Katy is a few miles west so should be spared the brunt of the storm unless the track shifts.

 

 

However, they are gonna get hit some and are gonna get hurt.

 

My best guess unless this thing makes a really strange track change is that Katy will be safe enough. Uncomfortable, wind and water damage, but probably better than trying for the highway given the conditions right now.

 

[ 23. September 2005, 07:19 AM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[Guest jay_con]

How do these Hurricanes get thier name please ??

[Leon Roskilly]

@AUTUMN@:

How do these Hurricanes get thier name please ??

See: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html

 

Down the page a bit: "B : TROPICAL CYCLONE NAMES"

 

 

Lots of other hurrican facts from the menu on the left at:

 

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Chris Plumb]

Latest Discussion...

 

FLIGHT LEVEL WIND DATA AND RADAR OBSERVATIONS FROM THE AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT THE CONCENTRIC EYEWALL CYCLE MIGHT BE NEARING COMPLETION. THERE IS NOW ONLY A SINGLE

FLIGHT LEVEL WIND MAXIMUM AT A RADIUS OF ABOUT 20 N MI...ASSOCIATED WITH THE OUTER EYEWALL THAT THE AIRCRAFT RADAR INDICATE IS SLOWLY CONTRACTING... WHILE THE INNER EYEWALL CONTINUES TO DETERIORATE.

RECENT GOES INFRARED IMAGERY ALSO INDICATES THAT A COMPLETE RING OF VERY COLD CONVECTIVE TOPS...COLDER THAN -70C... NOW SURROUNDS THE

EYE. THE CENTRAL PRESSURE HAS ONLY RISEN SLIGHTLY TO 917 MB AS MEASURED BY THE MOST RECENT DROPSONDE. RECENT FLIGHT LEVEL AND DROPSONDE WIND DATA DO NOT SUPPORT AN INTENSITY GREATER THAN ABOUT 110 KT...BUT GIVEN THE VERY LOW PRESSURE...THE INITIAL INTENSITY IS ADJUSTED ONLY SLIGHTLY DOWNWARD TO 120 KT. RITA IS ABOUT TO PASS OVER ANOTHER EDDY OF HIGH OCEAN HEAT CONTENT. COMBINING THIS WITH THE POSSIBLE CONTRACTION OF THE OUTER EYEWALL DURING THE NEXT

SEVERAL HOURS...SOME RESTRENGTHENING IS FORECAST IN THE SHORT TERM. GRADUAL WEAKENING IS POSSIBLE LATER ON FRIDAY BEFORE LANDFALL DUE TO LESSER OCEAN HEAT CONTENT CLOSER TO THE COAST...AND TO THE POSSIBILITY OF SOME INCREASE IN THE WIND SHEAR. THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT THE INTENSITY WILL LIKELY FLUCTUATE DURING THE NEXT 36

HOURS...AND RITA IS EXPECTED TO MAKE LANDFALL AS A MAJOR HURRICANE...AT LEAST CATEGORY THREE.

 

ALTHOUGH RITA HAS WOBBLED WESTWARD DURING THE PAST COUPLE OF HOURS...THE OVERALL MOTION DURING THE PAST SEVERAL HOURS HAS REMAINED WEST-NORTHWESTWARD...ABOUT 300/9. THERE ARE NO CHANGES TO THE OFFICIAL TRACK FORECAST...SINCE THE VARIOUS DYNAMICAL MODELS STRADDLE THE PREVIOUS ADVISORY TRACK. RITA IS EXPECTED TO

GRADUALLY TURN NORTHWESTWARD AND EVENTUALLY NORTHWARD AS THE HIGH TO ITS NORTH SLIDES EASTWARD. RITA IS FORECAST TO THEN ESSENTIALLY

STALL IN ABOUT THREE DAYS IN THE AREA OF NORTHEASTERN TEXAS WHERE STEERING CURRENTS ARE FORECAST TO BECOME VERY WEAK. THIS SCENARIO

POSES A GREAT RISK OF VERY HEAVY RAINFALL WELL INLAND AND FOR MANY DAYS AFTER LANDFALL.

 

FORECASTER KNABB

[Leon Roskilly]

Hillbilly,

 

I'm keeping your fingers crossed for you and yours.

 

I'd be a lot more worried if they were to the East of Houston (not only is the hurricane track over that way, but the winds will be stronger on the eastern side of Rita).

 

Reports of 100 miles of almost stationary traffic, as the traffic from Galveston gets mixed up with Houston traffic, I just hope it clears before Rita comes ashore, being in a car on the freeway won't be a good place to ride out what Rita has on her menu.

 

With most hurricanes, it's the wind to be feared,

 

With Rita, it's storm surge, and perhaps more importantly the rain induced floods, that will follow landfall that people really need to be aware of.

 

This could bring a lot of problems and danger far inland.

 

But to the West and on high ground is the better place to be.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[big al]

once again from across the pond all we can do is hope and pray that this time lessons were learnt and no one has to lose their life unnecessarily .must be real bad to get evacuated out of New Orleans and then have to move again 2 weeks later .somehow American does not seem so invincible right now .big AL

[Newt]

To give you an idea of the size of this storm, here is a post to a weather blog on Rita. The area in question is near Ocean Springs, Mississippi which is marked by the red X and is very near Florida where Rita has supposedly come and gone. Time was 0700 GMT today so 0100 in Mississippi. At that point the storm was centered well to the west of that area.

 

 

quote:

---

Flooding issues already in Jackson County MS.

 

My brother was on duty tonight and he called me about 11pm (CDT) asking if I had any information about flooding. The Gulf Park Estates subdivision in Ocean Springs (right on the coast) at that point was already cut off by flooding from Simmons Bayou, and all roads in or out were underwater by over 2 feet of water, and my brother couldn't get his patrol car in there to help those people. He didn't know about any surge there (in eastern coastal MS) because they of course don't have a teletype or anything left to get info from the NWS, and their land lines went out again today so no phones, and their patrol car radios aren't working too well either since the storm.

 

Last time I heard from him was shortly after that when he was taking the causeway to the next little coastal subdivision to the east of there (Belle Fontaine Rd). What he is doing is checking because a lot of folks are camping out in tents on their slabs around there, or in a little mobile trailer. And if people are staying in their houses that were flooded (some are, because they still have nowhere else to go), they don't have any power. So it is a given none of those folks know about this. They're also going to be getting a high tide tonight of 2-3 ft as well.

 

I didn't have info to give my brother to let him know how much water they had had at that point, how much more they were going to get out of the 4-5 feet of surge expected, when it would go down (I'm guessing with the high tide coming, not until mid-morning). Of course all these people in the county living on the coast or next to a bayou or stream, don't know about this. It is still like a disaster zone there.

 

So luckily I got hold of some late-night met at the MOB NWS, who was able to get NWS NOLA to give my brother a call so they could get some info on the flooding. I believe the EOC is still running there but I guess communications are still really bad, because they weren't able to get any word out to the deputies and so on, about serious flooding issues.

 

Well at least a lot of houses, like my brother's, won't have to worry about getting flooded, because they were already flooded by Katrina and not usable. The issue is all of these tiny pockets of people at various locations in the county, who are not listening to the radio or watching TV, because they don't have it, and the water rising in the dark when they can't see it.

 

So that was all I could do to help him out.

---

 

[ 23. September 2005, 03:31 PM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[captain cojones]

hi newt, been watching the pictures on the t.v, of the jam packed roads, leading away from the coast.

if you notice, the opposite side of the freeway leading towards the coast is almost empty.(obviously).

why on earth dont they do as they do here. When we have certain times of the year with lots of traffic all wanting to go in one direction,(the mass migration of people from madrid to the coast on the first weekend of august for example)

the authorities temporily use the empty side of the freeway to give extra capacity in the direction that needs it. they leave one or two lanes as normal, but the rest is used to provide extra space to keep things moving.

simple idea, costs nothing, and is effective.

best wishes dave.