I said it earlier in this thread...I can't imagine banks and insurance companies rolling the dice again. Katrina, we were told, was a once every 300 years storm....and this one could be worse just 3 years later. I just can't imagine private investment getting jazzed about building back up...again.
If there is a 21 foot storm surge...pushed up from the east to the northwest into NOLA...that entire city will be under water. All of it.
Looking at the latest sat it seems to look like a wobble to the North. Eyewall replacement cycle? BTW- You can watch four different NO channels at the link below. http://www.maroonspoon.com/wx/gustav.html
The thing is, if this storm doesn't hit Houston, or if it's just a cat 2 or 3 with little damage in NOLA, no one will believe the media when the next real big storm comes. Many insiders knew Rita wasn't going to hit Houston, but they still let people pack up and clog the highways.
1. All NOLA got from Katrina was Cat 2 winds. It doesn't need Cat 4 or 5 to end up with levees made obsolete. 2. The National Weather Service's track for Rita pointed towards a near Houston landfall...they can not make predictions without some margin of error. They are not exact and they never claim to be. They tell you to make preparations just in case. 3. At this point, Gustav is exceeding the projections for size and strength. If anything, it's been underhyped so far.
Fixed that for you. Still burns inside me. At least my wife and her family aren't flipping out about evacuating Houston this time.
There is nothing lacking in common sense from getting the hell out of dodge when meterologists are telling you a Cat 4 is bearing down on you. That it didn't come to Houston is irrelevant. There's never a guarantee it's going in any one direction. Had Rita hit Houston it would have been a freaking nightmare.
I'm in the insurance business. To some, a disastrous hurricane would be a dream come true... I feel sorry for the people in the way of this hurricane. Looks like Lafayette or Lake Charles is going to get smashed head on. I have family there
I always wonder what it would have been like...at one point a couple days before landfall they had the eye going straight over sugar land where i am. sometimes its intruiging to wonder...
I don't know what you saw...but here's the little secret...they don't KNOW where it's going. It's nature...it's big...it's beyond their control....and they make good guesses...and that's it. So the idea they KNEW it was going somewhere else....and said something different...fails outright...because they didn't KNOW. Computers modeled landfall...and the NHC made their forecast taking all the models into account.
Max I could give you a list of bullet points and we could go "toe to toe" debating Rita. Out of respect for the current thread topic, I'll just say this: If Katrina hadn't blasted New Orleans a few weeks prior, there would have been no mass/hysterical evacuation of Houston for Rita.
I can tell you what I saw. In a conversation with his friend, a government official (name disclosed by the media) knew it wasn't going to hit Houston. He told his friend, don't worry about a thing. Rita is not an issue, and you don't have to worry about anything. It was on Fox News during the day, I am pretty sure it was a Friday, because that is the only day I used to work at my dad's video store. I guess people just wanted to be extra cautious after Allison, but it was blown way out of proportion.
Rita was frightning in her own right. Do you remember Rita blowing up after moving off the coast of Florida? 180 mph sustained winds and 895mb... absolute monster. If it would have made landfall at that strength I might not be here.
You are dead on Max. There was no way to predict that a high pressure system was going to stall over the top of us for about 4 days and gradually push Rita's projected landfall eastward until it weakened and allowed the storm to come ashore. If this little miracle hadn't happened god knows what kind of stories we would be talking about today as far as Hurricane Rita is concerned.
That is true also, but the typical person thought we would have a repeat of Katrina in Houston. Just acting in a panic.
