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?

The Xes are just so the glass doesn't spray everywhere when it does break. It's not going to prevent it from breaking at all.

On the plus side, I'm sure you still have lots of duct tape left over from the 2001 anthrax scare.

I have no further advice than to suggest thinking about installing hurricane shutters when you get back.

In a storm this big, boards don't do much either. They help protect the glass from wind, but if there's anything being blown by the wind, forget it. The big tape X's are only of any value if you're staying IN the house and if you don't have any kind of film on the glass. Most windows nowadays have a UV filter pre-installed, so they wouldn't shatter anyway. As to traffic, leave as soon as you can afford it. The drive will just take longer and longer as more time passes. Not to mention it will be easier to get supplies from the local stores there before all the other evacuees start showing up and raiding the shelves.

Hey all. Apparently this was a bad time to take a cruise (booked 9 months ago). I'm in Cozumel right now typing from our cruise ship and everyone's worried since we're supposed to be docking in Galveston and the port just got closed. Of course, we're mobile so are completely safe- actually our cruise is likely going to be extended a few days. My wife's family is in Houston though and we're worried about them.

We just paid for 30 min of internet connection so we can send emails to family so I figured I'd use my remaining time to post here. Hopefully this thing goes away- it's a very strange feeling knowing that Rita is headed for our port of landing . . .

Ugh, I'm guessing they'll change your port. it's a Cat 5 and headed for Galveston area with no signs of decreasing in strength... in fact it's increased since I last checked. It's already looks more powerful than Katrina. =\

Good luck man, keep us posted.

Same here, We'll be praying for ya'll over here.

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/RT/float-vis-loop.html
http://www.click2houston.com/index.html
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
http://www.galveston.com/webcams/
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/h2005_rita.html
http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/Archive/Sep2005/Rita_TMO_2005264_lrg.jpg

Yesterday, after work, my wife and I decided to get out. We packed valuables, memorabilia, and a couple days of clothes and away we went. The decision-making process was a little weird. Value per unit volume seemed to be a key criteria. It's a lot easier to pack up my RAID server than my entire computer, for example. We took my wife's wedding dress, since it has obvious sentimental value, but left behind all my suits, including the wedding one, since they're entirely generic and easily replaced (not to mention, most don't quite fit any more...).

We decided to take both cars. In hindsight, this was a mistake. Had we taken one car, we would have been able to alternate sleeping and driving vs. the near hallucinogenic experience of trying to keep yourself cogent while staring at an infinite series of red taillights. Sure, we would have had less capacity for stuff, but we'd have lived with it.

We hit the road around 9pm, headed for Dallas. Normally, it's a 4 hour drive (~250 miles). We actually arrived at my parents' place at 2:30pm the next day. We initially got on the Hardy Tollroad, which runs parallel to I-45 and which had no appreciable traffic until it was about four miles away from merging into I-45. From then up to the point at I-45 contracted down to the two-lane road that's used for inter-city traffic, it was pure hell. We were effectively trapped in a 10 mile long queue of nearly ten lanes that fed a limited number of cars into a two-lane road. During this period (10pm to about 4am), we were averaging about 1.5 miles per hour. I thought, for sure, that I was going to destroy my transmission every time I was barely starting in first and then had to slam on the clutch and brake. Every time you do that (i.e., drop engine power and slam the clutch), my transmissions makes this entirely unpleasant slamming sound. Anyone care to remote diagnose?

Anyway, once we got into the two-lane inter-city road, things improved thereafter. In particular, once we completely left behind the Houston suburbs for true, rural nowhere, we started going sometimes as fast as 30mph. However, it seemed that, throughout the day, the traffic's group velocity would randomly change for no discernable reason. Sometimes we were going 70mph. Other times 10mph.

Once the sun came up, and once I was dangerously nodding off and catching myself, we pulled over at a rest stop. Walking around and getting fresh air and sunshine is invaluable. We ended up gassing back up at Maddisonville (roughly half-way on the 250 mile drive). Several gas stations were already out of gas. The one we went to was running out of regular, but still had plenty of premium. If we were only a couple hours later, we could well have not been able to get the necessary tank refill. I've heard from two separate sets of friends that they abandoned their evacuations for precisely this sort of reason and retreated back to their homes. Expect to hear a lot of discussion of gasoline supplies in the aftermath examination. If a city's evacuation plan is all about using private cars, then there need to be a plan for how they're refueled during the evacuation. (For what it's worth, that 1.5 mph slow crawl yielded 10 mpg versus my car's normal ~20mpg city / 25mpg hwy.)

Once we got past the half-way point, the average speed picked up in a big way. Earlier, I feared we wouldn't get in until late this evening. Instead, we arrived early enough to actually relax a bit (or, in my case, to catch up on a deluge of email...).

Latest news: they're apparently trying to send out "fuel trucks" to refuel cars on the road. How are they going to pull that off?

Glad you're (probably) out of harm's way. (My wife went to school in coastal Wilmington, NC, and after already having been hit by two hurricanes there, she decided to play it smart and avoid Hugo by going back to her folks' house in Charlotte, 175 miles inland. Bad move, as it turned out.)

At least on the northbound drive from Houston to Dallas, there are a large number of "rest stops" and "picnic stops" (the former having bathrooms and lame vending machines, where the latter is just parking plus a few benches). One could easily park a fuel truck at these stops. Once you get past the half-way point, the rest stops and such become fewer and further in between, but by then the traffic was moving efficiently, so there wouldn't be any such need.

An update- we're still planning on going into Galveston, but on Monday rather than Saturday. We're going to follow the storm in- sounds like a choppy ride to me. I'm not sure what to expect- it seems to me that if it hits Galveston in full force there won't be much point to us going there. But I'm sure they're thinking about all of this.

The biggest worry we have is my wife's family, all in Houston. We offered them the use of our house in San Antonio that we're in the process of selling, but I don't know what their plans are. I only hope they don't try to stay around for us . . .

On the plus side, since we're killing time it's back to Cozumel for another day!

The latest hurricane charts have it going east of the city, so the worst case seems to be off the table. On the other hand, the traffic has gone from bad to worse. It's unlikely, if they haven't already left, that your family would have any chance of getting to San Antonio.

I tried to get to Austin yesterday afternoon, but after 5 hours, and not getting far at all, I've holed up at my bosses house in Cypress, TX. It's basicly if you've not left Houston by yesterday morning, you're best off just staying where you are.

So, it seems to have hit land as a Category 3; weaker than expected. Re-flooding New Orleans even though the levies are trying to work. And all with the help of the feds, according to the radio. Battered reputations trying to make good? What a rough situation.

I spent the night glued to CNN as I used to live in Lake Charles. The live pictures they are showing now are really of the lake. They are at the east end of the I-10 bridge, looking across the lake, so their pictures look worse than it may be. That said, I'm glad the people I know down there left. With New Orleans I didn't feel really "connected" with what happened. Rita is totally different as they are showing places on TV where I used to live. It feels closer to home. Definitely helps you empathize with all hurricane victims.

I'm home. I caught the last flight out of New Orleans yesterday before they shut down the airport. The whole drive to the New Orleans airport we were going through big bands of serious wind and rain, and my parents were convinced I wouldn't get out, but I wanted to risk it. While sitting at the terminal and looking out the window, there were a couple of times I was pretty damn sure we weren't going to fly either... like when you couldn't see 10 feet out the window because of the grey solid mass of wind and rain. But it passed in bands, and the pilot was keeping us posted as we sat on the runway waiting for each band to pass over. Two passed us by with horizontal rain and one that obscured the entire runway, but he gunned it when it calmed and took the most intense takeoff angle I've ever experienced. As soon as we were off he rolled hard into a crazy steep banked left turn. Then leveled out and did another to the right, I guess steering around some storm cells. I didn't know passenger airplanes could maneuver like that, it was nuts. But, once we got above it the view was amazing and the ride was clear. I felt like I was escaping a war zone or something, and breathed a big sigh of relief.

My thoughts are with all of you over there. 2 of these big ones just in a row, i just can't imagine. The biggest storm i've seen was Lothar, which destroyed alot of trees in the black forest with 180 km/h max. But that's nothing against these hurricanes.

Good luck from Germany,

Thomas