City officials just announced the official Houston 2005 Hurricane Evacuation Plan:

• Hispanics use I-10 West to San Antonio
• Cajuns use I-10 East to Lafayette
• Rednecks use 59 North to East Texas
• Republicans fly Continental to Washington DC
• Yankees use 45 South to Galveston
• Longhorns use 290 West to Austin
• Aggies use 610 Loop

Hurricane Rita has reached Cat5 status and we may be directly in her path - we'll know more in the next 24-48 hours. Currently they are pointing it southwest of us, meaning we'll be getting the bad side of it with rain and wind. We may be heading north sometime tomorrow if they call for a mandatory evacuation.





If something happens to me, I'm bequeathing the site to gizzy this time - he has time to work on it

Sweet! I win! lol... Wait, I'm not even an admin yet.. ...

But on a serious note, I do have nothing but time

HURRICANE RITA BECOMES THE 3rd MOST INTENSE HURRICANE
The pressure in dangerous hurricane Rita fell to 898 mb making Rita the 3rd most intense hurricane in the Atlantic basin. Katrina is now the 5th most intense at 902 mb behind Allen. Gilbert at 888 mb and the 1935 storm at 892 mb are the top two storms.


www.accuweather.com



The angle has been adjusted a bit our direction

If you where closer I'd offer you my guest room lol...

thank you.

Looks like it has angled even more our direction, they've called for a mandatory evacuation. We'll be putting plywood on the the windows today and heading out - not sure where yet.

You're still welcome to use my guest room :-x

Total Est. Time: 34 hours, 26 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 2370.88 miles

Long drive, hope you get good gas mileage lol...

So you're trying to tell us that you're the 4th most intense hurricane in the Atlantic basin?

---Jamin

yeh man, allen is just that hardcore...

Spent the day boarding up windows at 3 homes - temperature 100+ all day - I musta drank 2-3 gallons of fluid and still cramp everywhere.

Rita has turned a bit more north and looks to be heading straight here now. We'll be headed out shortly as soon as I get a shower. Traffic on the highway is a parking lot and has been all day. We're hoping it will thin out a bit tonight, but if nothing else at least it will be about 20-25 degrees cooler.

I think we'll plan on coming back if they let us Sunday night.

Good luck!

Good luck and stay safe!

Stay safe Allen!

Thank you guys. We went to my bro-in-law's home in pensacola florida - smooth light traffic the whole way. Hurrican Katrina has done a job on the landscape in Mississippi tho My wife's family headed north towards dallas and traffic is gridlocked there, no gas to be had and people are being stuck out on the highway.

Rita is headed straight for my hometown now, should be there tonight. Good timing on the escape, tho we drove all night. I'm headed to bed :zzz:

They keep showing video all around my house, but stay 2 blocks away Pretty good amount of damage, but it looks like places that never boarded up their windows. I imagine if something happened to the house they'd have it on there by now, you got to go down my street to get to some of the places they are showing.

Very thankful we headed to Pensacola when we did o/

They're not letting anyone back in yet, maybe tomorrow, probably Monday or Tuesday - lots of powerlines down across streets, windows blown out, awnings out in the street, trees everywhere, emergency services are down to barebones while trying to dig out, etc.

Here's some cool satellite (and other) pictures of Rita:

http://www.brianrobak.com/rita.html

They're talking now like it might be 2 weeks before power is back on in the city So much was supposed to have started on Monday with work, now we're put off until who knows when.

At least Geraldo is pronouncing the area locations right now

Glad to hear you guys made it out ok. Hopefully all your stuff is in good shape.

Thank you, there's some minor damage to the house, major to all the trees. I can see why they're saying 3-4 weeks + before they can let people back in the city - *every* block of *every* street has power lines down, trees ripped up and dropped everywhere, some homes have trees through them, etc.

There's convoys of huge tree service trucks going out every day to begin clearing streets so that EMS can get through if needed, huge tractors, back hoes and bulldozers are pushing them to the side for now. They're starting in the cities south of here to remove the trees, trash, etc so that the power people can get in to work on the electricity lines. Then they'll work northward towards us. It'll easily be a month before we have power back to everyone. School has been canceled during that time, plus the time it takes to put them back right once they get clearance to start. All businesses except for a couple gas stations and a couple stores running off generators are shut down. Crazy what one hurricane can do to hundreds of square miles - and we didn't even get the flooding like they did south of us and over into Louisiana.

I'm at my parents, working during the day at my dad's business to cleanup and repair (the roof was blown off) during the day (100+ degree heat now and no electricity). In the evenings I'm working on my notebook pc to get forms and orientation manuals typed up for the new hospice we were supposed to start this week. Everything is on hold. We're running the house off a large generator my dad has, so at least the nights are bearable. Got to boil water to make sure it's clean for the foreseeable future - sometimes it just stops while they are working on it somewhere.

My brother is in the fire department - he's working everyday all day (sleeps at headquarters) until further notice - he works as a fireman and also goes door to door making sure people are ok and asking them to leave the city and go to shelters if possible. The city picks anyone who wants to go up and sends them to the staging shelter, then to san antonio to a shelter at Kelly AFB with shelter, food and water until the city is opened back up. Yesterday he spen most of the afternoon removing the steaks, chicken, and fish (a couple tons worth) from Cheddars (a local restaurant) and bringing it to the local shelters, at least what could be saved.

Talk soon, headed to www.fema.gov to fill out disaster relief forms.

Note to self: stay away from oceans

We have the Pacific Ocean here in the NW USA but we don't get tornado's, or hurricanes... Crazy southeners...