What we are seeing is incredible. It's a storm that suddenly erupted well East of where most Hurricanes emerge, and went from Tropical Storm to a Category 5 Hurricane in about 30 hours, which may be the fastest intensification on record. Rita is now almost as strong as Katrina was at her strongest, with 167 mph winds, about 8mph slower than Katrina's highest winds. This is around 225km/h, with overnight speeds of 217km/h. That's a wind faster than your car can go, almost twice as fast as most countries speed limits. That's very very powerful.
Katrina made landfall as a Cat 4 storm, and her death toll now stands at 1037 but more bodies are still being found every day, more than 3 weeks after Katrina devastated the area.
Rita is now almost as large as the entire Gulf of Mexico, with her outer arms already wisping over New orleans. Most news sites refer to her as 'a monster'.
The South African meteorologist we've seen in news footing, Ivor van Heerden, who correctly predicted all the damage New Orleans suffered, including the storm surge, levee and structural damage, before the storm hit, has said that as little as a 3 foot storm surge will topple New Orleans levees. That seems almost certain to happen now.
Rita's trajectory takes her anywhere between Corpus Christi in Texas, to New Orleans, with Houston lying, it seems, right in front of her. Galveston is regarded as the most likely landfall at the time of writing. Galveston is also vulnerable as a low lying city, that will need its seawall to windstand a storm surge that may exceed 20 feet (the wall is 18 feet high).
We're hoping the storm peaks now (Rita's eye is perfectly formed at the moment), and weakens as it moves over water not as warm as it is currently experiencing, when it approaches the coastline. This is what weather analysts are doing now: waiting and watching for this storm to peak, which should happen over the next 12 hours.
If a foreign power had set out to destroy America's oil infrastructure, in terms of wiping out legions of rigs and platforms, they would struggle to do more damage than Katrina has done. Remember, America is already using its own Emergency Oil Stock, and it's well before winter. Rita is headed to more vital sources of oil infrastructure scattered along the Texas (East of New Orleans) area of the Gulf Coast.
Oil and gas output hit again as Rita gains in strength
By Sheila McNulty in Houston
Published: September 21 2005 18:52 | Last updated: September 21 2005 18:52
Five per cent of US refining capacity remains offline following Hurricane Katrina, which zoned in on Louisiana. Hurricane Rita is forecast to hit Texas, home to 30 per cent of US refining capacity, late Friday or early on Saturday. Most of that capacity is housed in Houston, which is a critical supplier of refined product to other states.
The Gulf region is a delivery point for 50 per cent of US crude and product imports and home to several key gathering and interstate pipeline and storage systems, said Katherine Spector of JP Morgan. “Rita's impact will be exaggerated because any losses will be in addition to losses already sustained by Katrina,” she said.
She noted that Katrina shut down roughly 2m b/d of refining capacity in Louisiana and Mississippi about 10 per cent of US refining capacity at its peak. While a little more than half of that has resumed, four key Gulf refineries remain offline.
“It is expected to take a couple of months to the end of the year before all the still-downed facilities are normalised - that is, barring another severe storm before the end of the hurricane season in November,” Ms Spector said.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ddcbd4de-2ac4-11da-817a-00000e2511c8.html
In a few days the impact of this storm will probably felt at your local gas station.
US braces for Rita's wrath
From: Reuters By Mark Babineck in Galveston Texas
September 22, 2005
About 1100 Hurricane Katrina evacuees still in Houston's two mass shelters faced another evacuation as the city found itself in Rita's possible path. They were being sent to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas.
Rita's centre was about 1215km east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas, at 2am (AEST) today.
At that stage, the centre said Rita had become a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale - with sustained winds above 217km/h overnight.
"The conditions over the central Gulf are much like they were for Katrina," hurricane centre deputy director Ed Rappaport said.
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