In… and out…. Breathe, Polimom…. relax….
lol – sort of.
If anyone had asked me a week ago whether Katy was a good place to be (in this area) for a hurricane, I’d have said yes. I may even have had the conversation with a few of you! But that was in the abstract, and I was visualizing the many lesser storms I’ve ridden out in the past.
The truth of the matter is, we’re on the wrong side of this storm’s track. I’d be thrilled if somebody could share some wind projections that differ from those I’ve already seen, because the ones I’ve looked at indicate that Katy will likely have winds roughly 20 mph from whatever Houston gets. In fact, unless I’m totally reading all this wrong, the winds here may be higher than the projections for Galveston.
Thankfully (for us in Katy) we will not have problems, at all, with storm surge. We’re much too far inland. The coastal residents are facing a truly dire threat. For us, it’s just the wind, and possibly tornadoes. Knowing that, I found this statement, from weather.com, immensely comforting:
If there is any good news at this point, it is the fact that it is very difficult for a hurricane to maintain category 5 status for an lengthy period of time. Near-perfect to perfect atmospheric conditions are necessary for a category 5 hurricane to exist and these “perfect” conditions are first – difficult to come by and second – do not remain in place for a long period of time. So although Rita is currently a category 5 hurricane, fluctuations in intensity is likely.
About half of the neighbors on my street are evacuating. The few gas stations here that are not sold out have hour-long lines. There are no batteries, plywood, or bottled water at any of the stores near here.
I gotta tell ya – it’s really hard to think straight, when a Cat 5 Hurricane with sustained winds of 165 mph is moving toward you. Rita really needs to back down some.