Just when things were starting to get back on track...



See the number 2 in "2AM Sat"? Above that is Galveston Bay. Houston's southeast corner roughly lines up with the northwest part of Galveston Bay. They've announced a mandatory evacuation for Galveston Island, which you can't really see on this map. Galveston is a long, skinny island, parallel to the Texas coast, more-or-less due south of Houston.

My employer, Rice University, in the center of the city, is roughly 40 feet above sea level. My house, in the "Heights", is maybe six feet higher than that. As such, the concerns are generally quite different from those in New Orleans. Flooding definitely happens here (see my photos of Tropical Storm Allison), although it generally drains quickly. If Houston loses power, which it didn't in Allison, it's going to be decidedly unpleasant to be here (~100 degrees and 100% humidity). And, on top of that, I've now got a 4-month old baby to think about.

My most obvious destination is my parents' house in Dallas. I've got keys. It's already got a crib for the baby and a guest room for us. Dad finally got DSL and WiFi. The downside is the length of the drive. In "normal" traffic, it's 250 miles and takes 4 hours. In evacuation traffic... it's going to be much worse. We'd need to load both cars with valuables, meaning nobody would be in the back with the baby if she started screaming. As such, we're thinking that we might want to actually do a late night drive *tonight*, even though the odds of the hurricane actually hitting close enough to matter is maybe 13%.

Nobody's talking about boarding up their windows yet, and I count 30 windows on my house. Boarding that up would be a huge pain, not to mention I may not be able to get the boards. I've heard that many people just use duct tape to make big X's on their windows. I've got enough duct and/or packing tape that we could certainly do that. Uggh.

Thoughts?