Hurricane Rita coverage: Houston Chronicle - Stormwatchers - Rita Blog - SciGuy Blog | KHOU.com - Rita blog | KPRC | KTRK | Houston-Galveston Emergency Blog Network |
Where the refineries are
RigLogix map that tracks Rita's path through the oil fields and platforms of the Gulf of Mexico.
New: Rigzone RigLogix Hurricane Rita Reports
15 projected paths for Rita, via The Oil Drum
Current NOAA link for this storm.
6:43 p.m.
Links for the long haul: I'm taking a break. There are a lot of links here, and I've added a few "portals" to more information.
Technorati blog search on "hurricane Rita"
Flickr photo uploads: hurricane clusters | hurricane rita
Hurricane Rita Help Wiki - from the folks who brought you the Katrina Wiki
The links people are showing each other (very raw, like looking into the Web's stream of consciousness): Rita | Hurricane
Stay safe, Texas and Lousiana, and good luck.
6:10 p.m.
Bush skips Texas to avoid hampering Rita response. Reuters. A sensible decision. Reuters seems to have taken a meataxe to its lead when the President changed course. It reads a little funny:
President George W. Bush, eager to show he is in command of the federal response to Hurricane Rita, abruptly canceled a trip to Texas on Friday to avoid interfering with emergency relief plans for the storm.
3:19 p.m.
One more group webcam page; this may be useful as the storm progresses: The Great Big Hurricane Webcam Salad: Tossed by Foxcheck.org
2:40 p.m.
I just added more cams to the 12:47 p.m. cams item. Please scroll down.
2:19 p.m.
The Houston Chronicle's SciGuy, Eric Berger (Let's talk about the evacuation, shall we?):
The situation on the freeways, principally I-10 approaching San Antonio, Hwy 290 approaching Austin and I-45 approaching Dallas, is abhorrent....
He's seeking reports of those who've made it to somewhere else, "as a sort of open-letter to our elected officials who plan for events like this."
1:41 p.m.
New hurricane computer model tested: MSNBC touts the Advanced Research WRF Model Predictions for Hurricane Rita -- which is not forecasting landfall as far east as some other models. (It's pointed just west of Galveston, as opposed to other forecasts that put it up at Port Arthur. This map, which includes the locations of refineries, magnifies the area for those to whom this is not familiar geography.) The storm has not yet made the predicted northward turn upon which the Port Arthur forecasts are based.
Citizen weather forecasting: At Foot's Forecast, "Mr. Foot, the site's author, is also an Earth & Environmental Science teacher at Dundalk High School in Baltimore County, MD and has been forecasting storms for over 20 years."
12:47 p.m.
Galveston webcams. While they last.
KHOU puts the traffic cameras on a map.
Extreme weather cams: Rita
12:11 p.m.
Blaming the victims, or irony? I'm trained not to guess, but this is an (inadvertently?) funny lead on this Chron story today (For motorists, all roads lead to frustration):
Thousands of furious evacuees sweltering for hours on traffic-choked freeways Thursday put a stain on what had been a generally successful response by state and local governments faced with back-to-back weather emergencies in Texas....
"This was not in the plan," County Judge Robert Eckels said, turning away from the lectern after a news briefing dominated by questions about the gridlock that resulted from the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita....
I can hear the grumbling now: How dare you all evacuate together? Why didn't you bring a three-day supply of food for your 100-mile journey as a Rhode Islander would? (30 miles is a daytrip to us.) You should have a spare tank and your own porta-john, too. Then you won't embarrass our attempt to look good, better than Louisiana anyway.
11:36 a.m.
(Tech note: My home desktop died -- hardware crash -- just before Rita and my laptop keyboard's numbers row, except for 5 and 6, has also gone dead. I copied a long value of pi into a text editor and have been copying numbers for time stamps, etc. For a while the headline had the death toll from the bus explosion at 20 in the headline and 24 in the text because I forgot and typed a "4." Nothing happened, of course. I've just showered and driven in to work, where everything functions. I'll clean up the page and blog on.)
10:26 a.m.
Nola.com blog: Rain in New Orleans, water rising in Ninth ward
Water apparently has flooded back into part of New Orleans on the western side of the Industrial Canal. From the Interstate 10 high rise over the canal, water was visible at the New Orleans Cold Storage Facility and in other port facilities Friday morning. Water also had spilled onto Alvar Street and neighboring roads.
On TV, CNN photographer Alfredo deLara is reporting a levee break; he's witnessing water rising five to ten inches a minute.
Wall Street Journal's Storm News Tracker blog keeps an eye on the assets. It's open to all without subscription.
9:36 a.m.
From winding road in urban area, a blog by Houston community college professor Jaye Ramsey Sutter, who isn't evacuating:
...Finally some one thought to ask the National Guard to bring gasoline, however, they were delayed because the hoses on the trucks were too big for non-military vehicles...
Some genius closed a considerable number of rest areas that once dotted our highway system in Texas.
9:09 a.m.
24 evacuees die in bus fire Chron - WFAA
A bus carrying elderly Bellaire evacuees from Hurricane Rita caught fire this morning on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing 24 people, authorities said.
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They aren't blaming anyone. It is obviously a natural reaction to be frustrated when you are stuck in traffic for 16 hours. Texas officials aren't blaming a soul for their frustration, they are saying this wasn't the plan because they had hoped that evacuating in zones would aleviate SOME of the traffic.
I will say to you what I said to a friend earlier who was critizing what is going on 2000 miles away from where YOU live - my friend lives there too as I am a native Rhode Islander. Texas state and city officials are doing the absolute best that they can. At least they gave a mandatory evac order 72 hours ahead of time instead of 24. At least people in Houston are actually listening to that order. They are trying to move OVER 2 MILLION PEOPLE - bigger than the population of RI - across a city that is BIGGER than Rhode Island. If ANYONE believes there would have been no traffic in this situation, they are clearly a complete moron. This traffic situation would have happened anywhere they were trying to move that many people, not just Texas. ANYWHERE. And if YOU don't believe that, I put you in that same group of morons.
Of course, everyone is an expert when they don't have to deal with it themselves.
And I'm an evacuee.
:)
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