Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Lovely Rita Meter Maid Approaching Texas

Retail establishments are going full blast in the Houston Area with the big stores having long lines and some hurricane related supply shortages. The big things are bottled water and plywood and gas although generators are also not to be had.

Really, why are people wasting money on bottled water? Fill up your tubs and sinks and all containers -- FRIDAY if you stay or tomorrow if you are leaving. This is panic buying after all the images of Katrina.

Gas stations are running out of gas. I will have to shuffle cars in a bit to fill up my truck.

This area around here of La Porte, Deer Park and Pasadena, is only in the Hurricane level 4 or 5 evacuation zone. And that if it was coming straight toward us. Right now it looks like we will get 70 mph winds perhaps if it stays aiming to the south and a lot of rain for less than a day.

Our concerns are mainly flooding. This area did flood because someone panicked and released some water with nowhere for it to go during tropical storm Allison several years ago (2001). This is that tropical storm that stalled and then hit the Houston area twice and some highways ended up with over 10 feet of water. Our family has moved to higher ground 6 houses away, the city and county have added more drainage and retention ponds and said they have a better control over the dam release since last time.

We are not panicking and my sister is making fun of all those who are. Of course, she seemed to be sticking with an obsolete forecast that it will hit Corpus or Brownsville and totally dismissed the one forecast that had Galveston as the target instead of the current Matagorda.

Here is a good Houston-Galveston area hurricane evacuation zone map if you have a PDF reader.

I'll post a section with this. Blue needs to evacuate, yellow evacuate on a category 2 or 3, purple on a category 4 or 5. We have a two story house but will evacuate on a 3 or 4 headed toward us. Leave it to Pacific Views to have a copy of the forecast where we would evacuate.

No comments: