If there's another call to evacuate the Houston area because of a hurricane threat, this will be part of the reason why.
Imagine a Category 3 hurricane striking the western end of Bolivar Peninsula. The storm surge would raise water levels by 6 feet in Galveston Bay and along Galveston Island, according to computer models.Now, imagine the same storm striking a mere 20 miles down the coast, just past the Galveston seawall. The surge would push as much as 17 feet of water into Galveston Bay and 13 feet along much of Galveston Island, clipping it from behind even if the seawall buttressed the initial waves.
The two landfall scenarios just 20 miles apart would mean the difference between excellent surfing conditions in Galveston and monstrous, fatal waves of water.
[...]
For the most part, evacuations are intended to move people away from the storm surge. The question is whether the science of surge modeling can aid evacuation managers anytime soon.
The storm surge forecasting tool, known as the Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes model, is accurate to within 20 percent if given perfect information about a storm's landfall time and location. But such information is rarely perfect.
Although the National Hurricane Center's tracking forecasts are now about three times better than they were in 1970, predictions made 24 hours before landfall still have an average error of about 60 miles.
Three days out -- roughly the minimum time needed to call a mass evacuation in the greater Houston area -- the error is about 150 miles.
"Can we ever be accurate to within 10 miles?" asked the hurricane center's chief, Bill Read. "Probably not within my lifetime."
Put another way, mass evacuations are here to stay -- at least for decades.
Just something to keep in mind. On the plus side, the early indicators point towards a relatively quiet hurricane season, though as one commenter noted, there were only four named storms in 1983, it's just that one of them was Alicia. So let's not get too cocky just yet.
The answer, if your house was built somewhere other than a city like Houston that actually enforces hurricane building codes, is probably not.
Since Hurricane Rita, the state's lack of attention toward its building codes, often characterized as a muddy patchwork of inconsistent regulations, has left hurricane experts stunned.Houston meteorologist Bill Read, new chief of the National Hurricane Center, called out local and state policymakers earlier this year for doing nothing. Former hurricane center director Max Mayfield expressed similar concern, saying better building is the country's only safeguard against rapid coastal development.
And disaster safety officials are equally incredulous that Texas, with nearly three years passed since Rita, and a new hurricane season beginning today, has done so little.
"Texas is an aberration," said Leslie Chapman-Henderson, chief executive of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, a nonprofit organization. "It's eerily quiet in the state. Why are they not having a conversation about codes?"
You already know the answer to that question, don't you? This is Texas, after all.
The state has quasi-mandatory codes for coastal residents, unevenly enforced codes in cities, and builder-enforced codes elsewhere. National advocates for stronger building codes say that's probably not the most forward-looking approach for a hurricane-prone state.Texas cities, such as Houston and Galveston, have statutory authority to set and enforce building codes, and for the last decade new coastal developments have been subject to reasonably strong codes. But counties have little authority to regulate building codes, leaving unincorporated areas something of a mystery, varying from finely constructed homes to well, who really knows?
[...]
Building codes are only as good as their enforcement, experts agree, but in a state like Texas, where there's no uniform code policy, enforcement is all over the map. A private analysis of the state's municipal codes bears this out.
ISO, an information risk company that primarily serves insurers, assesses the building codes and enforcement standards in local communities. ISO then grades a community on a scale from 1, exemplary, to 10. A good rating generally lowers a region's insurance rates, a bad rating the contrary.
Statewide, Texas has an average of about 5.5 on the ISO scale, which is worse than the national average, about 4.5, and considerably worse than the country's gold standard for codes, Florida, about 3.5.
For cities within 30 miles of the Texas coast, Houston, Baytown, Pearland and Harlingen do the best, each earning a rating of 4 for residential development. Galveston earned a 5.
[...]
Building codes do matter. In 1992, the strongest hurricane to ever strike the U.S. mainland, Andrew, brought 165 mph winds to the Miami area.
While pricier homes nearby were flattened, 27 homes built to a hurricane resistant code by Habitat for Humanity sustained no structural damage. A Miami Herald headline read, "Tally: Habitat 27, Andrew 0."
Andrew awakened Florida to the importance of building codes, and the state has adopted the most rigorous building protections in the country, requiring everything from storm shutters to metal roofs in the most vulnerable areas.
This has raised building costs between 0.5 percent to 5 percent, building code advocates say. But once the codes go in, and every developer has to play at the same level, market forces quickly drive down costs.
"Better building will not only help save lives, it will ultimately help save tremendously on insurance payments," said Mayfield, who is now a TV meteorologist in the Miami area.
A consistent code may also improve traffic flow during evacuations because residents outside storm surge zones would have confidence that their home could withstand winds associated with major hurricanes and not feel the need to flee, Mayfield said.
Chapman-Henderson, the safe homes advocate, said the first step toward creating a statewide code would be to hire engineers from the state's universities to assess the existing quality of homes and building code enforcement. That would provide information to begin developing a uniform code.
"This is one of the avoidable disasters," she said. "Not doing anything is the classic definition of insanity."
Yet the idea of a statewide building code appears to have little traction in Texas. Smithee, who is not unsympathetic to overhauling the codes, says it would probably be difficult.
"There's always been opposition to change from builders groups," he said.
Quelle surprise. But then, the public good has never been a priority for these guys. Shifting their financial risk to the consumer, that's what they're all about. Sadly, they have too many friends in the Lege for there to be any hope for change, but at least now we're talking about it. That's a start.
(By the way, hurricane season started a day early this year. Have you stocked up on bottled water and batteries yet?)
Stop me if you've heard this one before.
Like most other forecasters who have, or will soon, released their predictions, [hurricane season prognosticator Bill] Gray sees an active year, meaning the Atlantic should see more storms than usual. Gray said today he expects 15 named storms this year. But what does this really tell us?Not much, as it turns out.
Seasonal forecasters suggest people shouldn't obsess on the specific number of storms predicted. Instead, forecasters, including Gray, say it's important to focus on the predictions for which they say there is some skill, namely whether a hurricane season will have above- or below-normal activity.
Gray defines normal activity as the average number of named storms that occurred between 1950 and 2000. The average during that period was 9.6 named storms -- that is, tropical systems that achieved at least tropical storm status and were designated by the National Hurricane Center as Allison, Bret, Charley and so forth.
Hurricane forecasters generally agree the Atlantic entered an active period in 1995, when some driver -- be it natural forces, global warming or some combination thereof -- began warming sea surface temperatures in the tropics and causing more storms to form.
Since 1995, only two years have been below the 9.6 average: 1997 (seven) and 2006 (nine). By those odds, as scientists say we're still in a warm Atlantic period, one probably can expect there's an 85 percent chance Gray will be right with his prediction that this will be an active year.
It's kind of like predicting the Red Sox and Yankees to compete for the American League East, isn't it? But as the article goes on to suggest, these preseason predictions are often just rough guesses.
Predicting the actual number of storms in a given year, especially five months before hurricane season peaks, is even more problematic, as recent seasons have suggested.Before the hyperactive 2005 season, for example, Gray forecast 13 named storms in April. There were 26.
And for the 2006 season, perhaps in reaction to the active 2005 season, he predicted 17 named storms in April. There were nine.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also has faced criticism as it has trumpeted its own seasonal forecast in recent years, releasing it to much media fanfare during nationally broadcast news conferences. But NOAA's forecasts have been as wrong as Gray's.
So, at this year's National Hurricane Conference, the new director of the National Hurricane Center, Bill Read, said NOAA would seek "a lot less publicity" for the 2008 seasonal forecast to be released in mid-May.
SciGuy, who wrote the article, has more. Basically, consider these early forecasts to be more suggestion than command, and pay closer attention to the revised forecasts later in the year.
If you want to get an idea for how busy the hurricane season is going to be, check the water temperature.
When the water in the hurricane breeding grounds of the Atlantic warms one degree in the dead of summer, overall hurricane activity jumps by half, according to a new study.Scientists have long known that hurricanes get their enormous energy from warm waters, so the warmer the water, the more fuel a storm has to either start up or get stronger. The study calculates how much storm frequency and strength is due to warmer sea water, said author Mark Saunders, professor of climate prediction at the University College London.
Saunders found a distinct numerical connection between the ups and downs of water temperatures and how nasty hurricane season gets. That helps explain why hurricanes have been so much worse in the past dozen years, and even why 2007 -- with waters slightly cooler than normal -- was an exception and not that bad a hurricane year, Saunders said.
"It's very surprisingly sensitive to small changes in sea surface temperature," he said.
[...]
Saunders focused on the water temperature in a band of tropical sea that stretches from around Puerto Rico and the northern coast of South America east to near the coast of Africa since 1950. He looked at hurricane activity since 1965.
The average August-September water temperature in the region is about 81 degrees. Saunders calculated that for every one degree Fahrenheit increase:
-- Overall hurricane activity -- a combination of frequency and hurricane strength -- increases 49 percent.
-- The number of intense hurricanes, with winds over 110 mph, increases 45 percent.
-- The number of hurricanes of any size increases 36 percent.
-- The number of tropical storms increase 31 percent.
For example, 2005 was the most active hurricane season on record, and Atlantic water temperatures were the warmest, about 1.4 degrees above normal. That hurricane season set a new high with 28 storms and 13 hurricanes. Seven of the hurricanes were major storms.
In 1971, when the water temperatures were the coolest, there were 13 storms and six hurricanes, including one major one.
That's as good a reason as any I can think of to root for a cold winter.
Even though we just had a second consecutive relatively quiet hurricane season, some people think this one should have been quieter still.
With another hurricane season set to end this Friday, a controversy is brewing over decisions of the National Hurricane Center to designate several borderline systems as tropical storms.Some meteorologists, including former hurricane center director Neil Frank, say as many as six of this year's 14 named tropical systems might have failed in earlier decades to earn "named storm" status.
"They seem to be naming storms a lot more than they used to," said Frank, who directed the hurricane center from 1974 to 1987 and is now chief meteorologist for KHOU-TV. "This year, I would put at least four storms in a very questionable category, and maybe even six."
Most of the storms in question briefly had tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph. But their central pressure -- another measure of intensity -- suggested they actually remained depressions or were non-tropical systems.
Any inconsistencies in the naming of tropical storms and hurricanes have significance far beyond semantics.
The number of a season's named storms forms the foundation of historical records used to determine trends in hurricane activity. Insurance companies use these trends to set homeowners' rates. And such information is vital to scientists trying to determine whether global warming has had a measurable impact on hurricane activity.
The rest of the story, as well as the accompanying SciGuy blog post, is interesting and informative in its discussion of the science and data of hurricane tracking, but I still came away a bit disappointed. The reason for that is that the only mention of how this affects insurance rates is what you see in the paragraph above. Even then I wouldn't pay any mind, except that the potential cost of this hurricane inflation was highlighted everywhere - in the print edition, on the Chron index page, where the headline reads "Rush to name storms may be costing you money", and on the story page, where the subhead is "As season ends, some say center rushes to classify, which costs you". That's an awful lot of emphasis on cost for what we got in the story, which raised the subject then never explored it. I think a followup article is needed here to make up for that.
On the one hand, as the 2007 hurricane season officially ends, it wasn't that bad.
Despite alarming predictions, the U.S. came through a second straight hurricane season virtually unscathed, raising fears among emergency planners that they will be fighting public apathy and overconfidence when they warn people to prepare for next year.Friday marks the official close of the Atlantic season, so unless a storm forms in the next few days, only one hurricane -- and a minor one at that -- will have hit the U.S. during the June-to-November period. Mexico and Central America, however, were struck by a record two top-scale Category 5 storms.
The preliminary total for the season: 14 named storms, six of them hurricanes, two of them major.
That was less activity than the government predicted before the season started, and stands in stark contrast to 2004 and 2005, when the U.S. was hit by one devastating storm after another, including Hurricane Katrina.
[...]
The season's 14 named storms were on the low end of the 13 to 17 government scientists predicted. The six hurricanes didn't reach the seven to 10 forecast. The two major hurricanes were also below the three to five predicted.
Colorado State University weather researcher William Gray was further off the mark. Before the start of the season, he forecast 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes, five of them major, with a strong chance that a major hurricane would hit the U.S. coast.
Humberto, a Category 1 storm that hit Texas and Louisiana in September, was the first hurricane to strike the U.S. in two years. It was blamed for one death and $30 million in damage.
Gerry Bell, a hurricane forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the season was relatively quiet largely because La Nina, a cooling of the water in the Pacific that normally boosts the formation of hurricanes, had weaker-than-expected effects.
The government's 2006 preseason forecast proved overly pessimistic as well. Scientists predicted 13 to 16 named storms, eight to 10 of them hurricanes, with four to six of them major. Instead, there were nine named storms and five hurricanes, two of them major.
Bell said that this marks the second "near normal" season in a row. However, storm activity tends to go in cycles, and he said the Atlantic is still believed to be in a more active hurricane period that began in 1995.
On the other hand, if you were outside the US, this hurricane season was very bad indeed.
For a second year in a row, the United States has escaped a severe hurricane hit, pushing memories of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans another notch into the past.But for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, the 2007 hurricane season ending on Friday has hardly been benign.
"No, not at all. The consequences for the poor have been very high," said Judy Dacruz, a representative in Haiti of the International Organization for Migration.
The 14 tropical storms that formed in the Atlantic this season killed more than 200 people in Martinique, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua and Mexico and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to often impoverished and vulnerable communities throughout the region.
[...]
In the Mexican town of Mahahual on the Yucatan Peninsula, Hurricane Dean destroyed a cruise ship pier which had been a key source of income. "Windows, doors, electrical systems -- except for the basic structure of the hotel, everything was destroyed by Dean," said Rodolfo Romero, owner of the boutique Hotel Arenas.
Dean, which became a maximum-strength Category 5 hurricane, killed at least 27 people as it roared through the Caribbean in August and struck the peninsula.
Hurricane Felix in September also became a Category 5 storm on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity, killing 102 and leaving another 133 missing in Nicaragua, according to the Pan-American Health Organization.
Dean and Felix were the first two Atlantic hurricanes since records began in 1851 to make landfall in the same season as Category 5 storms.
The last storm of the season, Noel, soaked the Dominican Republic and Haiti, killing more than 150 people as rivers broke their banks and surged through towns.
"It's been very busy, especially in Central America but also in the Caribbean," said Tim Callaghan, a senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. "We have provided disaster assistance to Dominica, Belize, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico."
That first story talks about how after two quiet years in the US, folks here are likely to get complacent and less willing to pay attention to warnings and evacuation notices. I can't speak for anyone else, but I sure as hell haven't forgotten our 20-hour odyssey to Dallas from 2005, and I haven't thought it would get any easier now that we have two kids to think about. We were on full alert for Hurricane Dean, and would have hauled ass out of here at what would probably have been a fairly low objective risk level. I don't plan on taking this any less seriously any time soon.
Here's a summary and review (PDF) of the year's activity from William Gray and Phil Klotzbach, the two Colorado State dudes who make the predictions that get the press. Here's their press release if you want the condensed version. And here's a great quote to wrap it all up:
"Meteorologists are known to be absolutely brilliant at after-the-fact explanation of weather phenomena ... but please don't press us too hard on future events!!"
You can freely substitute "political scientists" and "elections" (or, if you prefer, "smartass political bloggers" and "elections") in that statement and it wouldn't be any less true.
Joe Jaworski writes the following letter to Governor Perry:
Dear Governor Perry:I know you share my outrage at the snail's pace of state aid for Texas families more than two years after Hurricane Rita came ashore with such force. The recent State Auditor's report finds that of nearly 4,300 applications for federal assistance controlled by your administration, only 13 have been helped.
This letter is to ask you to take immediate steps to break the logjam that has kept all but a mere two percent of available aid from getting to the families who need it most.
It is outrageous that these taxpaying citizens - these Texans! - should be victimized twice - first by the storm, then again by the state bureaucracy.
The State Auditor's report makes clear that the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has been too cautious in providing relief to the storm's victims but thrown caution to the wind when it comes to privatizing relief effort, including a multi-million dollar contract with a private firm whose top lobbyist is your former chief of staff.
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has also squandered more than $230,000 in hurricane relief on administrative expenses, according the State Auditor's report. That's one-fifth of what has been spent thus far--a ratio that would make Halliburton blush.
I urge you to make sure that Texans who applied for aid receive initial payments to get things going. The state can then provide additional funds based on a more thorough approval process. This plan will guarantee immediate help while allowing for safeguards to protect taxpayers against fraud or abuse.
As a Galveston city councilman in 2005, I helped lead the efforts to prepare for Hurricane Rita's arrival. Had the storm not turned east at the last minute, our region would have been devastated. Even though we avoided the brunt of the hurricane, thousands in our area suffered property and infrastructure damage. They deserve help - now.
Sincerely,
Joe Jaworski
Jaworski is referring to this story from last week. Given the initial response from Governor Perry, I'm not sure his letter will be well received.
Gov. Rick Perry defended housing situations on Friday - both his own move to a $1.8 million lease home while the Governor's Mansion undergoes renovation and the two-year wait for assistance endured by 4,300 Texas families displaced by Hurricane Rita.After voting early on the 16 propositions on Tuesday's general election ballot, Mr. Perry told reporters that both housing situations were based on security needs - in his case, to accommodate his security detail, and in the Rita victims' instance, to protect taxpayers' money.
A critical state audit report released this week showed that the state has spent only 2 percent of the half-billion dollars in federal aid given to help victims of the 2005 storm, which happened only weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana and Mississippi.
Thus far, only 13 families have been supplied mobile homes.
"You try to find a balance of having the right safeguards in place and getting the money to the people who need it in an appropriate amount of time," Mr. Perry said. "I think the vast majority of Texans would rather get it right then get it quick."
He said the state's response in the immediate aftermath of the storm was good, and that other "pots of money" have been used to help rebuild southeast Texas communities.
He said the housing funds are slowed by federal restrictions and the state's own insistence that the money not fall victim to fraud.
Asked repeatedly about the audit, the governor said it was unnecessary to keep "beating this horse" and that his chief of staff had made phone calls to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.
"Can it be faster? Yes. Should it be faster? I think so. But again, I think finding a way to do that without jeopardizing the taxpayers' money is really important," Mr. Perry said.
"Am I going to lift a finger to help? Nope," Perry did not add. For goodness' sake, even John Cornyn thinks this is ridiculous.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has denounced the state's "shockingly slow pace" of parceling out federal housing aid to Hurricane Rita victims.Citing a state audit released last week that found only 13 families had been helped, out of almost 4,300 applicants for aid, Mr. Cornyn rebuked the state's top housing official Thursday and huddled with federal agency leaders about how to speed the flow of money.
"While it is important to meet federal regulatory requirements and have safeguards against fraud and abuse, I believe the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has taken an overly cautious and bureaucratic approach to delivering assistance to homeowners," Mr. Cornyn wrote Michael Gerber, the department's executive director.
[...]
Mr. Cornyn complained to Mr. Gerber that with similar block grants, Louisiana has helped 36,000 families and Mississippi, more than 13,000.
"The go-slow mind set ... must be reversed, and I urge you to streamline and expedite the approval process," Mr. Cornyn wrote.
When even our junior Senator thinks the government should be doing more to help, you know things are bad.
One feature of early October that I think we're all paying more attention to these days is the revised hurricane forecast for the rest of the season.
Hurricane expert William Gray slightly downgraded his forecast today, calling for four named storms in October and November, including two hurricanes, one of them major.Gray's team at Colorado State University had predicted five named storms in their earlier forecast for the two months.
"We expect October-November to be very active," said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of the hurricane forecast.
In April, Gray had predicted a "very active" 2007 season, with 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes, with five of them major hurricanes.
As of Oct. 1, a total of 13 named storms had developed, including four hurricanes. Two of the hurricanes were major.
Gray's team revises the forecast throughout the hurricane season, which lasts from June through November.
"August had somewhat above-average activity -- about 130 percent of average -- while September had about average activity -- about 92 percent of average," Klotzbach said.
Eight named storms formed in September in the Atlantic basin, tying a record set in 2002 for the most in that month.
But measured by the combined strength and duration of those storms, this September was actually the least active in the Atlantic since 1997, the National Hurricane Center said. That is because most of the September storms were weak and short lived.
It has been a strange season, hasn't it? Two monster storms, one other that sprang out of nowhere, and a bunch of fizzles. From our perspective in Houston, at least, it certainly could have been worse. I'll still be ready for it to be over.
According to SciGuy, in the past 150 years, only three hurricanes have hit the Texas coast after September 24, the most recent being Jerry in 1989. The 24th is a key date, since it's when Rita made landfall in 2005, though technically it did so in Louisiana. Be that as it may, we're in the home stretch, and we should have smooth sailing from here on out. But still don't go drinking all that bottled water just yet. You never know.
This really pisses me off.
Two years after Hurricane Rita pushed deep into East Texas with devastating force that damaged or destroyed an estimated 75,000 homes, the state has spent less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the federal grant money set aside to repair or replace many of them.Local and regional officials say the state has been slow in loosening the purse strings. State officials blame restrictive federal rules and a lack of money compared to Louisiana and Mississippi. Advocates of storm victims contend the entire process has been broken from the start.
"It really appears to me that the state has had an overabundance of caution to prevent fraud and abuse," said Walter Diggles, executive director of the Deep East Texas Council of Governments. "Every time we talk to them they say, 'Look, we don't want a Katrina,' or fraud with individual distributions."
The state and three regional councils of governments, or COGs, have distributed less than $200,000 of the more than a quarter-billion dollars available in two separate allocations of federal housing assistance. And more than $210 million has sat frozen for months while a state agency seeks to hire a private contractor, which isn't expected to have initial disbursements done until next summer.
[...]
The issue isn't whether the government should subsidize housing repairs for storm victims. That was decided in the months after the storm when Congress and President Bush allotted two large Community Development Block Grants to the Gulf Coast states. Gov. Rick Perry assigned Texas' share -- $74.5 million in the first round and $428.6 million in the second round -- to the state Department of Housing and Community Affairs.
Of that, $250.7 million was earmarked for housing -- $40.3 million was released in 2006 and $210.4 million this year. The larger sum is awaiting management by a contractor, who could be hired next month.
Last summer, it sounded like money was imminent.
"Housing assistance is now available for emergency repairs, rehabilitation and new construction," Beth Anderson, chairwoman of TDHCA's governing board, declared in a July 2006 press release. "We are certain that the COGs will move quickly to move these funds and help those who need it most."
Since then, only $183,428 had been spent from the first grant as of mid-September, 14 months after Anderson's statement. Thirteen households had been assisted out of 423 that have qualified.
Michael Gerber, the department's executive director, said he empathizes with the poor, disabled and elderly East Texans who have been waiting for the grant money. But he said the state must comply with rigorous federal eligibility guidelines while ensuring that taxpayers don't get defrauded.
"There's no doubt about it that we've been able to draw down these dollars for some period of time," Gerber said in referring to the first round, adding the state must take extra care because it's having to make do with far less than its neighbors to the east.
The difference, Gerber said, is that Mississippi and Louisiana have disbursed more than $4.5 billion between them because they received more resources and are simply writing up to $150,000 checks to individuals.
Texas went a different route, choosing to work directly with contractors who will do repairs or rebuilds rather than give out money without supervision.
"I believe that in Texas we have higher expectations of accountability and program performance," he said. "Those clearly weigh on this program as well, and given the challenging population to serve and a very challenged housing stock, there's just a lot of moving parts to this. It's made it tough to get those dollars out as quickly as I would want."
This is ridiculous. Certainly, we want to be prudent with the funds that have been allotted, but we've lost perspective here. If two full years after Hurricane Rita we've barely spent one percent of the money to help its victims, then we're too focused on the possibility of fraud, and not nearly focused enough on getting people back on their feet and into their houses. What exactly are our priorities here?
It's so frustrating. This is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the insistence by some Republicans on six-month renewal periods for CHIP. To prevent one ineligible kid from getting benefits, they'd let thousands more who were eligible fall off the rolls. We need to strike a better and fairer balance between those two needs.
Keith Billingsley, a former state trooper who now acts as Diggles' eyes and ears as an inspector for the Deep East Texas COG, said time and further damage -- especially through this rainy summer -- is making bad problems worse."I tell you what is frustrating is seeing a house that would have cost $5,000 to fix 30 days after the storm will now cost $30,000 to fix because it's just steadily deteriorating," Billingsley said.
Increased damage also has victim advocates worried that the $40,000 cap on the second round of assistance won't fix the problems.
The words "penny-wise but pound-foolish" don't quite do this justice, do they? Amazing.
One more thing: Where are the elected representatives for Newton County, where this story is set? Where are Kevin Brady, Tuffy Hamilton, and Robert Nichols? (I should include Todd Staples in that list, since he was the State Senator for Newton County for a year after Rita.) Maybe they have been busy working on behalf of these constituents of theirs, but if so you can't tell from the story. At the very least, someone should be asking them about this.
Now-Hurricane Humberto took a right turn last night and hit Beaumont and Louisiana instead of Houston.
Hurricane Humberto blasted Beaumont with wind gusts up to 84 miles an hour this morning after forming suddenly and making landfall in Southeast Texas at about 2 a.m. this morning.The hurry-up hurricane brought 16 inches of rain to the Bolivar Peninsula in Galveston County just before landfall about 5 miles east of High Island, the National Weather Service reported.
Along with the deluge, Humberto pounded the Chambers and Jefferson county coasts with hurricane-force of winds at 4 a.m. today as the storm made its way through East Texas and into eastern Louisiana.
Besides Beaumont in Jefferson County the storm was beating up Orange County before sunrise today.
[...]
The Category 1 storm came ashore in a sparsely populated area at Sea Rim State Park near High Island, with wind gusts measuring up to 62 mph, meteorologist Jim Sweeney said. Then it headed for Beaumont and other densely populated areas, some of whose residents still are recovering from Hurricane Rita damage
"It's a very compact storm," Sweeney said. The strongest winds are very close to the center of circulation. The hurricane force winds only go about 15 miles."
Houston-area residents were spared 10 inches or more of rain that the weather service predicted for Harris and other coastal counties as the storm turned and strengthened, forecasters said. All tropical weather warnings for Harris and surrounding counties were lifted but a flash-flood warning remains in effect for Chambers County today.
Indeed, the storm, which began as a tropical depression Wednesday morning about 100 miles southeast of Galveston and was quickly declared a tropical storm, had only "minimal" effects in Harris, Galveston and Brazoria and nearby counties, forecaster Michael Blood said today.
"It jogged off to the north-northeast," Blood said. "Most of the heavy rainfall was offshore."
On Galveston Island, the storm dropped only about 4.5 inches of rain from early Wednesday to this morning, Blood said.
[...]
Sustained winds of 70 to 80 mph are expected until 6 a.m. today in Sabine Pass, Port Arthur, Groves and western Cameron Parish near Johnson Bayou and Constance Beach, the weather service said.
Humberto's eastward turn late Wednesday more than likely spared Houston from major flooding, said Blood.
The tropical storm warning for Harris, Brazoria, Fort Bend and Matagorda counties was lifted shortly before 11 p.m. Wednesday.
Rainfall in Harris County is forecast to average less than an inch today, though some isolated southeast portions of the county could see as much as two inches.
Once again, good for us, not so good for someone else. SciGuy has more, including this reminder:
We have learned a couple of things today. First, Humberto provides a good reminder that tropical systems often will do what they want, not what we think they will do. Our ability to forecast hurricanes leaves room for desire, and new research into these powerful systems should be amply funded. Second, any tropical system that makes it into the Gulf has a chance to strengthen rapidly.Both lessons are important for emergency managers and the general public alike.
Indeed. Humberto came on very quickly, and could have done a lot of damage here under only slightly different circumstances. Make sure you're always ready to prepare for a hurricane, because one can show up sooner than you think.
Boy, this sure developed in a hurry.
Tropical Storm Humberto is expected to reach shore late tonight just south of Galveston, dumping heavy rain from Victoria to eastern Louisiana.Some spots along the upper coast could receive 10 inches or more of rain by tomorrow, forecasters said. They hope the storm moves quickly to minimize rain totals in isolated areas.
"It's a slow moving storm," said Gene Hafele, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "But we don't think it'll stall out. It should move steadily inland."
[...]
The storm is expected to creep ashore between Freeport and Galveston near midnight, Hafele said. He said rain, high winds and rough seas are already lashing coastal areas. Hafele said rain would stretch as far south as Victoria, but be concentrated between Sargent and the Sabine River.
The storm has sustained winds of 50 mph with high winds extending 60 miles from the center, according to the National Weather Service. The slow-moving storm is 50 miles south of Galveston and moving north at about 7 mph. It is expected to turn slightly north-northeast during the next 24 hours. A tropical storm warning is in effect from Port O'Connor to Cameron, La.
SciGuy, as always, has the most thorough and concise information. The main piece of good news is that despite all the rain we've had this year, the last week or so has been dry enough that an Allison-like event is very unlikely. Of course, that still leaves a lot of room for bad stuff to happen. Read SciGuy and see for yourself what we can probably expect.
Six more hurricanes, that is.
Hurricane expert William Gray downgraded his 2007 Atlantic storms forecast slightly Tuesday, but he still predicted above-average activity for the remaining three months of the season, with six more hurricanes, three of them major.One of those hurricanes was lashing the coast of Honduras on Tuesday as a powerful Category 5 storm named Felix, said forecaster Phil Klotzbach, a member of Gray's team at Colorado State University.
Klotzbach said a combination of a weak La Nina and low pressure readings in the Atlantic usually indicated an active 2007 season.
The first two months of the Atlantic hurricane season, June and July, had average activity with two named storms but no hurricanes. August was about average, with one hurricane, Dean, which grew into a Category 5 storm before hitting Central America.
Well, I like the trend, anyway. Won't be of much consolation to the folks who've had to live through Felix or Henriette, though. And there's always something else to worry about. So stay tuned.
We were out of town this weekend, and as is often the case when we travel I lose track of what's going on in the world. So, I was a bit surprised to pick up today's Chron upon our return and read about Hurricane Felix.
Hurricane Felix churned toward Central America today, sending enormous waves crashing to shore as the Category 4 storm drew strength from the warm waters of the Caribbean. Forecasters said it could hit the coast with catastrophic winds shortly after daybreak Tuesday.As Felix headed west with 145 mph winds, tourists jammed the airports and locals stocked up on food and plywood or moved to higher ground. The storm was projected to reach Honduras on Tuesday and then slam into Belize, where many residents were still cleaning up from last month's Hurricane Dean.
"We are ready to face an eventual tragedy," said Douglas Fajardo, fire chief on the Caribbean resort island of Roatan.
[...]
Felix seemed likely to make landfall at the Honduras-Nicaragua border, along the remote Miskito Coast, which was already being pounded by heavy rain Monday. Honduran lawmaker Carolina Echeverria said officials were still trying to find enough gas to fuel boats evacuating people in the region, where isolated Miskito Indians speak a mix of Spanish and creole.
[...]
Felix, which briefly reached category 5 status today, is the second Atlantic hurricane of the season following last month's Hurricane Dean, which killed at least 28 people as plowed through the Caribbean and then slammed into Mexico as a Category 5 storm.
This is only the fourth year since 1886 that more than one Category 5 hurricane was recorded in an Atlantic season, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Only 31 Category 5 hurricanes have been recorded in the Atlantic since 1886, and eight of them have formed in the last five seasons.
I know this still feels like a fairly quiet hurricane season, all things considered - and let's be honest, after 2005 almost anything will feel quiet by comparison - but any season with two Cat 5s can't reasonably be called quiet. And that last sentence quoted above should give us all pause for the future. SciGuy, as always, has more.
In the end, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.
As of Wednesday night, the system was downgraded to a tropical depression. There were no deaths reported in Mexico nor known damage to its vital oil infrastructure, but a threat of inland floods and mudslides still loomed."There was a lot of preparation, a lot of planning, so we avoided human losses," said Juan Manuel Orozco, the state's police chief, after surveying the region.
Dean, whose impressive girth swirled clouds into the Pacific Ocean by afternoon, was a tropical storm before dusk and was expected to begin breaking apart over the central Mexican mountains overnight.
It was a much tamer storm than many had expected, and the farmers, villagers and fishermen here took it in stride. Even at the height of the hurricane, people walked the streets in Martinez de la Torre, a market town 25 miles inland where shops selling everything from tortillas to clothing remained open.
Within a few hours of the storm center's passing, electricity was on in many of the bigger towns and crews from the federal power company were working on lines.
"Despite the fury of this hurricane, up till now we've got off easy, and we've got off easy because we were prepared," Mexican President Felipe Calderon said while surveying the Yucatán Peninsula, where Dean first struck the country Tuesday with 165 mph winds.
We should all be thankful for that. As we know from recent history, it doesn't have to be like this.
Speaking of which, here's one for the Nobody's Ever Satisfied chronicles.
One Bexar County commissioner is saying the state went way overboard with preparations, and wasted some serious money on a storm that didn't impact Texas.County Commissioner Lyle Larson says the state wasted millions of dollars despite knowing Hurricane Dean was not headed our way.
"We had aircraft sitting at the tune of $10,000 a day out at Kelly AFB, just in the event they needed to be deployed," Larson said.
[...]
[W]ith millions of dollars spent on mobilizing aircraft, buses, ambulances and the Texas National Guard, did Texas overreact?
"The problem is, you do this two or three times, then people are gonna say, 'Do you really need us?' There's gonna be ... complacency's gonna take place," Larson said.
Throughout the preparations, San Antonio officials said it was better to be safe than sorry.
"If we just said, 'It's not going to hit us,' and turned around, and dropped our arms, and sent people home, we wouldn't be as prepared if it does take a turn," said Nim Kidd, the city's emergency management coordinator.
"There'll never be another opportunity like this. Because, even if this one doesn't hit us, the next one might," Mayor Phil Hardberger said.
Still, Larson said we continued to bring in resources late in the game, knowing Dean wasn't going to have an impact on Texas, and that the lesson to be learned here is efficiency.
"We just need to have a schedule, a time schedule, of how long it will take to them get here, a commitment of the resource, and then have a virtual exercise. You don't have to actually bring them down and physically have them in place, and send them to South Texas, knowing they're not gonna be needed," Larson said.
In the abstract, Commissioner Larson has a valid point. In the here and now, I suspect this is mostly a matter of risk assessment and where one chooses to draw the line between "we could still get hit" and "we're probably not going to get hit". I don't think it's a big surprise to anyone that less than two years after Rita, a Cat 5 storm in the Gulf is going to have just about everyone leaning towards doing too much rather than too little. I won't condemn anyone for that.
It could have been much worse.
Hurricane Dean slammed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico today as a roaring Category 5 hurricane, the most intense Atlantic storm to make landfall in two decades. It lashed ancient Mayan ruins and headed for the modern oil installations of the Yucatan Peninsula.Dean's path was a stroke of luck for Mexico: It made landfall in a sparsely populated coastline that had already been evacuated, skirting most of the major tourist resorts. It weakened within hours to a Category 3 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph.
Sure feels weird to see "stroke of luck" used in conjunction with "Category 5 hurricane", doesn't it?
In the largely Mayan town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, at one point about 30 miles from the center of the storm, people stared from their porches at broken tree limbs and electrical cables crisscrossing the streets, some of which were flooded with ankle-deep water.Tin roofing ripped from houses clunked hollowly as it bounced in the wind whistling through town.
"We began to feel the strong winds about 2 in the morning and you could hear that the trees were breaking and some tin roofs were coming off," said Miguel Colli, a 36-year-old store employee. "Everyone holed up in their houses. Thank God that the worst is over."
With the storm still screaming, there were no immediate reports of deaths, injuries or major damage, Quintana Roo Gov. Felix Gonzalez told Mexico's Televisa network, though officials had not been able to survey the area. In the Quintana Roo state capital, Chetumal, the storm downed trees and sent sheets of metal flying through the air.
Let's hope those immediate reports prove to be accurate. The storm caused multiple deaths in the Caribbean, and it will still hit the Mexican mainland as at least a Category 1 hurricane, so there's still plenty of potential for catastrophe. But hopefully, the worst is over.
SciGuy says Dean is notable in many ways.
Hurricane Dean moved inland near Costa Maya this morning as an historic, 165-mph storm with a central pressure of 906 millibars. This figure places Dean as the third-most intense landfalling hurricane ever in the Atlantic, behind only the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and Hurricane Gilbert in 1988.Among Dean's other notables:
- First Category 5 Atlantic hurricane at landfall since Andrew, in 1992
- Dean is the ninth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever to form
- Five of the ten most intense Atlantic hurricanes have now formed since 2004
Let's hope that list doesn't change much in the near future.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the first hurricane of the Atlantic season was a powerful Category 4 storm, and could reach the highest level -- Category 5, with maximum winds greater than 155 mph -- later today.As of 7 a.m. CDT today, Dean was about 440 miles east of Belize City, traveling west at about 21 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
Dean killed at least eight people as it moved across the Caribbean but Jamaica avoided a direct hit when the storm wound up passing to the south Sunday night.
There were no deaths reported in Jamaica, but the storm uprooted trees, flooded streets and tore the roofs off many homes, businesses and a prison block.
The storm is expected to cut across the southern Yucatan Peninsula, cross the Bay of Campeche and make landfall again in south-central Veracruz state, possibly entering the Mexico City area by Wednesday. With the mountains in the region already sodden with heavy seasonal rains, government officials fear severe flooding and mudslides.
[...]
In Texas, state officials cautiously shifted their response to Hurricane Dean as they watched the storm make its way toward Mexico.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who also directs the county's homeland security and emergency management office, notified area responders to stand down from a rescue and evacuation mission and reposition themselves as support for South Texas.
"The department will continue to monitor Hurricane Dean and is prepared to assist areas that may be impacted," a news release from Emmett's office stated. In Galveston, the emergency operations center closed its doors by midafternoon.
Officials in Texas, mindful of the lack of preparation that came with Hurricane Rita in 2005, continued to push vehicles and gas into the Rio Grande Valley, just in case.
Gov. Rick Perry on Sunday deployed 600 buses to the Alamodome in San Antonio. Another 700 were heading to the Rio Grande Valley, where they would remain on standby until local officials determined whether to use them.
[...]
In Brownsville, there were no plans for a mandatory evacuation, but those residents who wanted to leave were urged to do so if they could.
"We caution people not to underestimate this situation," Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada said. "This storm could turn our way very quickly."
One of the concerns they have in South Texas is how well the levees will hold.
With many of the forecast models predicting Hurricane Dean will hit Veracruz, Mexico, Rio Grande Valley leaders are turning their attention to the region's suspect levee system."The levees are our Achilles heel," La Joya Mayor Billy Leo told the Guardian, after speaking at a news conference Sunday to give an update on emergency preparedness in Hidalgo County.
"If Hurricane Dean hits northern Mexico, we could still be in danger because the Rio Grande will fill. We all know our levees are very weak and you might still have to evacuate because you are going to get flooded."
Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas, who also spoke at the news conference, agreed.
"Our focus is now changing from Hurricane Dean to the IBWC," Salinas said, referring to the International Boundary and Water Commission. "As Hurricane Dean goes south, we will have to consider what indirect situations might occur - rain, flooding, possible dams overflowing. It may be beautiful today but we may be talking in a week about the low-lying areas, such as Sharyland, having to evacuate because we have a river overtopping."
SciGuy has more on the likely effect Dean will have on Texas.
With a final landfall now forecast for 300 miles south of the Texas border on Wednesday, Dean's effects on this state should be minimal. Even if Dean re-strengthens into a powerful Category 3 storm it may only bring tropical depression-force winds to extreme south Texas for a few hours.Dean's presence in the Bay of Campeche may increase moisture along the coast, possibly bringing showers a little later this week. After that temperatures will warm as a strong ridge of high pressure returns us to normal August temperatures.
We'll see. All we can do at this point is hope for the best, and respond to calls for help afterwards.
Once again, good news from my perspective, horrible news from many other people's. Here's the late night update from SciGuy:
Today the models have fallen in line with a final landfall for Dean in Mexico. The official forecast has caught up, bringing Dean into Mexico about 210 miles south of the Texas border. This forecast remains conservative as a couple of models bring the storm even deeper into Mexico.Here's the distance from the Texas border yielded by the most recent runs of the most important computer models used by the hurricane center:
HWRF 1 p.m. run: 210 miles
GFDL 1 p.m. run: 130 miles
GFS 1 p.m. run: 270 miles
NOGAPS 1 p.m. run: 350 miles
UKMET 1 p.m. run: 320 milesFor a four-day forecast this is a surprisingly good consensus among the models. I believe that by [Sunday] morning we will be able to clear the upper Texas coast from a direct hit by Dean, and possibly any of its effects as well.
South Texas should remain on alert, but if the consensus among the models holds, it's likely the United States could escape serious harm from an extremely powerful and damaging hurricane. We're not there yet, but that's the trend.
Should that come to pass I would hope Texas and the rest of the country would do what it could to help Jamaica and Mexico, as these two nations appear set to bear the brunt of the most intense hurricane to form since 2005's Wilma.
It's hard to feel positive about one's own good fortune when one realizes what it means to someone else. I feel relief for my family, friends, and neighbors, and acute dread for everyone who is now in Dean's path. All I can do now is hope that Dean weakens, but there will be plenty to do later, once we know what damage Dean has done. Let's all be ready for that.
The bad news is that Hurricane Dean is on its way to becoming a Category Five storm. The good news, from my perspective, is that the models have nudged enough south, and are now clustered enough together, that Houston is now outside the cone of uncertainty. At the very least, it seems much more likely now that we won't take any real hit from this storm. Great for us, terrible for somebody else.
(And let me agree here with Richard Connelly - my one-stop source for figuring out how much to worry about this thing has been Eric Berger's SciGuy blog. Bookmark it and check it out if you haven't already.)
Meanwhile, the state's new multi-county, multi-agency planning commission for hurricane preparedness has been keeping itself busy.
"In the event that we do have to do evacuations, the timing will be coordinated so that everybody is synchronized," said Dennis Storemski, director of Houston Mayor Bill White's public safety and homeland security office. "They'll also be coordinating the need for resources."The group already is meeting and taking action, readying coastal areas and telling the public during a news conference Friday to prepare for a storm but not to evacuate.
[...]
The first meeting on Hurricane Dean, which took place at the Houston Emergency Center by conference call, came Friday morning, with another in the afternoon.
The group is planning twice daily meetings until the storm, which could strike anywhere from Mexico to the Mississippi River according to early computer models, is no longer a threat.
The committee includes representatives from Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Colorado, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Walker, Waller and Wharton counties, as well as both Galveston and Houston.
The most intense planning, so far, is focused on coastal areas. John Simsen, Galveston County's emergency management coordinator, said buses are being pre-positioned to ensure that evacuation transportation is available for some 6,000 special-needs residents. He said anyone who needs transportation help should call 2-1-1.
Galveston officials also are gearing up their emergency centers and notifying employees that the centers could be staffed around the clock this weekend to make sure preparations are completed, he said.
Simsen said plans call for Galveston to be evacuated first, followed in sequence by other cities, the closest to the coast being evacuated first. Mayors will be urging residents to wait their turn in order to avoid a massive traffic jam like the one that ensued during the Hurricane Rita evacuation.
A regional communication system is in place that will allow Galveston County to inform Houston officials on the pace of any exodus so the city can time its evacuation and keep traffic to a minimum.
"We've been working on this nonstop since Rita," Simsen said. "You will see a lot of things being done differently as a result of these meetings."
The way things appear to be going now, I'd guess any evacuations will occur in South Texas - it's possible Galveston won't have to take action at all. I wouldn't count on that, of course. We ought to have a good idea by Monday morning. Stay tuned.
SciGuy gives me some morning agida:
The overnight models have become more tightly clustered, and the news is not favorable for Texas, which now appears the target if Dean makes a U.S. landfall.
Dean may yet not make landfall in the US, and if it does it may strike farther down along the coast. It's still too early to tell. But since one of the existing models has it "bringing a Category 5 hurricane off the central and upper-Texas coast by next Wednesday", let's just say I'm a little nervous. Just a little.
So much for our quiet hurricane season.
Rescue workers were activated in southern Texas today in preparation for heavy rain expected to accompany newly formed Tropical Storm Erin moving through the Gulf of Mexico.At 10:30 a.m. CDT, it had maximum sustained winds near 40 mph, up from 30 mph earlier in the day, and was centered about 250 miles east-southeast of Brownsville. It could hit land Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
[...]
Farther out in the tropics, but still a potential threat to Texas, Tropical Storm Dean continued moving west Tuesday. The storm, located about 1,300 miles east of the Lesser Antilles on Tuesday night, attained 50 mph winds.
Forecast models suggested Dean would continue moving west across the Atlantic for several days, tracing the edge of a high-pressure system to its north.
If the system eventually turns north, it will miss land, but equally likely is a continued west-northwest track that could bring it near Haiti or Puerto Rico in about five days.
If Dean ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, the storm would find plenty of warm water to fuel intensification. But forecasters said it's too early to know where the storm will go.
Stock up on the bottled water now, before it all gets sold out. SciGuy has more on Erin and some good news/bad news on Dean:
Given the warmer water and lessening wind shear, the official forecast calls for a 115-mph, category-3 hurricane, but then hastens to add that because of the favorable conditions, Dean could be "notably stronger" than this.The bad news is that the Gulf of Mexico is still warmer (I'll do a full analysis this afternoon), and if Dean reaches the Gulf the United States will likely face a blow from a major hurricane. Although the models remain unreliable forecasting longer than five days, and Dean probably wouldn't reach the Gulf for a week, the storm's trend is clearly in our direction.
Yeesh. There's more of the good news/bad news in this what-if post. At least it's rare for a hurricane like Dean to hit Texas in August. But go buy some water anyway, OK?
Midway through the hurricane season, things are looking a little better than before.
Hurricane researcher William Gray lowered his 2007 forecast slightly Friday, calling for 15 named storms, with eight becoming hurricanes and four becoming intense.On May 31, at the outset of hurricane season, Gray had called for 17 named storms and nine hurricanes, five of them intense.
"We've lowered our forecast from our May predictions because of slightly less favorable conditions in the tropical Atlantic," said Philip Klotzbach, a member of Gray's team at Colorado State University.
The new forecast calls for three named storms, two hurricanes and one intense hurricane in August; five named storms, four hurricanes and two intense hurricanes in September; and five named storms, two hurricanes and one intense hurricane in October and November combined.
I know it's been very quiet so far, but the potential for bad stuff is still out there. So don't get too confident.
Plentiful rains throughout Texas the past year led weather officials today to declare an end to drought conditions across the state for the first time in at least a decade."We've gotten so much rain this year we've pretty much made up for the past few years' drought conditions in several areas of the state," said John Nielsen-Gammon, the state's climatologist and a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.
Only isolated areas in the northern Panhandle, far West Texas and along the eastern margins of the state are still below normal, he said.
Bad news:
"If there's enough rain to say we're drought-free, that means there's enough water around to cause other problems," Nielsen-Gammon said.Flooding persists in some areas, and many farmers are struggling to salvage crops that remain under water, he said.
Heavy rains have caused major flooding in several parts of the state since mid-June. At least 16 people have died, and property damage has been widespread. Numerous rivers remain at or above flood level.
Good news:
The same pattern that brought rain has provided cooler temperatures throughout the state this summer, a trend that Nielsen-Gammon said is likely to continue for several weeks.
Bad news: Well, as I said before, all this rain we've had means that if any kind of tropical storm were to come through in the near future, I fear that flooding would be way worse than usual. So keep your fingers crossed.
You might have noticed that it's been a quiet hurricane season so far this year. There are good reasons for that, but don't go drinking all that bottled water just yet.
First, the good news. Scientists had worried about La Nina, unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific, developing by now. This pattern, which hasn't yet appeared, has historically augured a fierce Atlantic season.Additionally, sea surface temperatures remain near average across much of the Atlantic tropics, providing less fuel for hurricanes. That's partly because of large African dust clouds that have blocked the sunlight and kept a lid on ocean warming. This dust, largely from the Sahara desert, also inhibits storm formation.
"But this year probably isn't going to be like 2006. I don't think we're going to luck out like that," [Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist with The Weather Underground,] said.
Compared with last year, the disruptive force of wind shear in the atmosphere is lower. Of still greater concern, in the northwest Caribbean Sea as well as parts of the Gulf of Mexico, the warm waters run deeper than even in 2005.
"This means that a storm moving into the western Caribbean and/or the Gulf of Mexico over the next few months may have a good chance of becoming a major hurricane, as long as wind shear is low in the region," said Chris Hebert, lead hurricane forecaster for the private, Houston-based service ImpactWeather.
Here are some charts from SciGuy, which show how Gulf water temps compare to 2005. If we get one heading this way, it could really intensify. Remember, it's August when things start to get busy most years.
What worries me isn't all that stuff as much as it is all the rain we've already had. How bad do you think the flooding would be if even a Cat 1 storm hit us right now? Maybe if we have a few dry weeks, I'll fret less. Until then, that's what's bothering me. Let's hope our lucky streak continues for another year.
The State of Texas plans to look towards the private sector for relief when the next big hurricane hits.
"If FEMA shows up, good," said Jack Colley, chief of the Governor's Division of Emergency Management. ''But we're not waiting."Call it one more example of the lingering Hurricane Katrina effect, but Colley and his team are looking past the traditional go-through-FEMA-to-get-ice kind of emergency management model.
This new strategy, borne during 2005's Hurricane Rita and fine-tuned in the two years since by the state's emergency agency, has retailers conducting mock drills alongside government officials.
"FEMA was an old contact point for ice, water, etc," Colley explained from his agency's state operations center in the basement of Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in Austin. "The private sector is willing and able to do this for us."
For the past two years, Colley and Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw have cultivated direct relationships with retailers after watching Louisiana and Mississippi officials dial FEMA in vain for food, water and other aid.
"FEMA can't compete with the private sector," Colley said. "They do it quicker, smarter, faster every day."
The problem with this line of thinking, of course, is that it conveniently forgets just how good FEMA was during the Clinton Administration, and how completely the Bush Administration's leave-no-crony-behind philosophy undid all of that. (Here's a couple of reminders, in case you've forgotten.) I don't doubt that HEB and Wal-Mart can do a better job than the current incarnation of FEMA. But let's face it, that's a mighty low bar to clear. And the point is that it didn't have to be this way.
It's really simple. When FEMA was run by a competent administrator and was given a mandate to succeed, it did. When it's run by a crony with no experience or interest in disaster recovery, it becomes a joke that needs to be worked around. Given the right kind of Presidential administration in place, there's no reason to believe FEMA can't be effective again. One can hardly blame the state of Texas for feeling compelled to deal with the current reality. But faith in the private sector has nothing to do with it.
Among the many task forces that were convened after the Hurricane Rita evacuation fiasco was one to deal with the issue of depleted gasoline supplies along evacuation routes. Here's the report.
Surprisingly, until Rita hit Sabine Pass on Sept. 24, 2005, fuel supply had been omitted not only from the state's nearly 200-page evacuation plan but from many local ones as well."What we know now is there was no fuel plan," said Jack E. Little, former Shell Oil Co. president and CEO, whom Perry tapped to oversee his Task Force on Evacuation, Transportation and Logistics. "Every company was on their own. The problem arose when the voluntary evacuation was overlaid on top of the mandatory evacuation and the roads were clogged."
[...]
When evacuation discussions finally were held in city halls and among county commissioners courts, gasoline makers found themselves outside with the public. There was no heads-up to prepare gas stations, which were operating like it was any other day in Texas, with underground reserves at a quarter to half-full.
"Rita occurred and there was really no fuel desk," said Wade Upton, the retired Valero Energy executive credited with crafting the resulting evacuation fuel plan.
Together with [Texas Emergency Management Chief Jack] Colley, Upton and the fuel committee agreed on a series of benchmarks that would activate certain responses.
No longer will gas stations, as they had before, operate with half-full or less storage tanks during an evacuation. Typically, gas stations keep anywhere from 10,000 to 18,000 gallons of fuel on hand.
"We didn't know that before," Colley said.
Now, when storm winds are five days from Texas' shore, fuel trucks will be filled and positioned in pre-selected staging areas known only to the industry and the state.
From there, trucks will be directed to gas stations along the coast, particularly those in urban centers such as Houston, where underground tanks will be filled to the 65 percent mark.
When storm winds are two days away, fuel distribution will move from the coastline to stations along the state's key northern and western evacuation routes.
It's this key 48- to 72-hour window that Colley thinks will change evacuation for the better.
"It's absolutely essential to this fuel piece," he said.
Sheriff's deputies will escort the fuel trucks, guiding them around evacuation routes so they don't get stuck in traffic.
Once the storm passes over land, Colley and fuel strategists will concentrate on redirecting distribution in coastal cities, so that when people return to their homes, they can get back to work and those with power outages will have plenty of fuel for generators.
Seems like a reasonable plan - certainly, it's better than no plan. I think any Rita-sized evacuation is going to severely tax the system no matter what we put in place, but this ought to handle most situations well enough.
The task force thought of some other things, too:
Colley smiles when asked about some of the smaller, more irksome items such as stoplights in small towns on evacuation routes and trains.Despite the Rita emergency, many smaller towns along evacuation routes kept stoplights timed as if it were just another day, helping slow millions of fleeing motorists to a crawl.
No one even considered asking train companies to delay or reroute their operations.
"You know that train track in Giddings?" he asks, referring to the town that sits on U.S. 290 that all Houstonians must pass when they take the northwest route to Austin.
"There will not be a train going through that town next time. Stoplights in the town will not be on."
Good to know. Houstonist has more.
I have a feeling that this is a subject we'll visit again and again in the coming years.
More than half of all evacuees from Hurricane Rita lived on ground high enough to avoid a surge of water from even the most powerful storms.Some hurricane experts say most of these 1.5 million "shadow evacuees" must heed the mantra of emergency planners -- run from water, hide from wind -- if Houston's next evacuation is to avoid the myriad problems of Rita's exodus.
Marc Levitan, director of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center in Baton Rouge, La., and Walter Maestri, former director of emergency management for Jefferson Parish, La., both said the key is offering inland residents credible options for sheltering in place.
"There are two main strategies for reducing exposure to hurricane hazards: evacuation and sheltering," Levitan said during a recent hurricane conference at Rice University. "Houston has embraced one, but it has, apparently, forgotten the other one."
Added Maestri in an interview, "With evacuations we are facing an impossible task. It cannot be done. Getting everyone out safely and quickly is like asking how many people we can get to dance on the head of a pin."
I don't doubt that most of Houston has little to worry about from a storm-surge perspective, and that sheltering is the safe, rational, and cost-efficient solution for the vast majority of folks here. But speaking from my own personal experience, there are factors beyond flood waters that go into everyone's own accounting of the risks. It's wise for the city to preach and teach preparedness, and to have places for people who can't shelter in their own residences to go. It's foolish to think that everyone who "should" shelter in place by some rational calculation will do so. It's foolish for the city to base its emergency plans on that as well. That's all I'm saying. SciGuy has more.
Whether this hurricane season will be active or not, local authorities are planning for the worst.
Harris County officials said Monday they are as prepared as they can be for hurricane season, which begins June 1.The key question, they said, is whether local residents have taken appropriate precautions.
"The government can only do so much," said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who is facing his first hurricane season as the county's chief executive. "The first person you must turn to is yourself. Individuals have to make sure they're prepared."
Area residents must recognize whether they live in one of four zones, delineated by ZIP codes, that might be placed under a mandatory evacuation order because of a storm surge, officials said.
An estimated 300,000 people in Harris County live in the surge zones.
The map is here (PDF). Note that the vast majority of the mandatory evacuation areas are outside of Harris County. Indeed, while 300,000 people sounds like a lot, it's less than ten percent of the total population.
On a related note, anyone remember the executive order from last year that mandated a single "incident commander" for each of the state's 24 regions to be in charge of things like hurricane evacuations? And remember the response from local officials, which did not please the Governor? Well, SciGuy remembers, and he gives an update on how things look today. Check it out.
Stop me if you've heard this one before.
Government forecasters called for a busier than normal hurricane season Tuesday.National Weather Service forecasters said they expect 13 to 17 tropical storms, with seven to 10 of them becoming hurricanes.
The forecast follows that of two other leading storm experts in anticipating a busy season.
The likelihood of above normal hurricane activity is 75 percent, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
"With expectations for an active season, it is critically important that people who live in East and Gulf coastal areas as well as the Caribbean be prepared," said Bill Proenza, director of the national hurricane center in Miami.
As SciGuy says, the hurricane prediction season is lasting as long as the actual hurricane season itself. Given that the first predictions for this year were made last December, that's more truth than jest. Note that in the table SciGuy put together, we have this apparent outlier, which suggests we'll have a fairly quiet year. What do you think? Place your bets and we'll see at the start of the Hurricane Prediction Season for 2008.
Last year, the official estimate for the 2007 hurricane season was 14 named storms. Then we heard that La Nina was active, which would tend to increase the number of hurricanes. And sure enough, that esitmate has now been bumped to 17 for 2007.
Forecaster William Gray said he expects 17 named storms in all this year, five of them major hurricanes with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater. The probability of a major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. coast this year: 74 percent, compared with the average of 52 percent over the past century, he said.Last year, Gray's forecast and government forecasts were higher than what the Atlantic hurricane season produced.
There were 10 named Atlantic storms in 2006 and five hurricanes, two of them major, in what was considered a "near normal" season. None of those hurricanes hit the U.S. Atlantic coast--only the 11th time that has occurred since 1945. The National Hurricane Center in Miami originally reported nine storms, but upgraded one storm after a postseason review.
Gray's research team at Colorado State University said an unexpected late El Nino contributed to the calmer season last year.
[...]
A weak to moderate El Nino occurred in December and January but dissipated rapidly, said Phil Klotzbach, a member of Gray's team.
"Conditions this year are likely to be more conducive to hurricanes," Klotzbach said Tuesday. In the absence of El Nino, "winds aren't tearing the storm systems apart."
Link via Houstonist, which notes that an updated forecast will be made on May 31, the day before the season officially begins. While it's always a good idea to be prepared for the worst, bear in mind as SciGuy reminds us that this is an inexact science. They predicted 17 storms last year, after predicting 13 for 2005. I'm hoping this forecast is inaccurate in the way that last year's was, but let's be honest: Sooner or later, we're going to be imperiled by another big storm. May as well be ready for it, even if we don't have to rely on that readiness this year.
Congratulations to Mayor White.
Mayor Bill White and a Louisiana school superintendent won the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Monday for their actions in response to the Hurricane Katrina crisis in August 2005.White and Doris Voitier, superintendent of schools in St. Bernard Parish, La., "took extraordinary risks and exemplified the best in political leadership to meet the needs of communities affected by Hurricane Katrina," said a statement from the JFK Library Foundation, which sponsors the awards.
"Mayor White's quick actions evacuating thousands of families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita most certainly helped to save lives," the foundation's president, Caroline Kennedy, said.
[...]
White and Voitier will receive the award in Boston on May 21 from Caroline Kennedy, the late president's daughter, and U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his brother.
The statement said White, as mayor, "marshaled the resources and good will of his city to provide refuge and essential services to hundreds of thousands of people who fled the Gulf Coast after hurricanes Katrina and Rita."
He also "led a community-wide effort that included diverting convention and event business to open the region's convention center and public facilities to tens of thousands of evacuees," it said.
"When the federal emergency response faltered in the days and weeks following the crisis, White mobilized more than 100,000 Houstonians in the public, private, business and faith-based communities to help evacuees rebuild their lives with independence and dignity.
"Houston offered innovative programs to provide more than 100,000 evacuees with long-term housing, job placement services and public education," the statement said.
This is a well-deserved award, and Mayor White's actions in earning it did more for Houston's reputation than all of Jordy Tollett's marketing programs combined. Congratulations, Mayor White.
"Forecasters warned today that a La Nina weather pattern -- the nasty flip side of El Nino -- is brewing, bringing with it the threat of more hurricanes for the Atlantic.Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the official end of a brief and mild El Nino that started last year. That El Nino was credited with partially shutting down last summer's Atlantic hurricane activity in the midst of what was supposed to be a busy season.
"We're seeing a shift to the La Nina, it's clearly in the data," NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher said. La Nina, a cooling of the mid-Pacific equatorial region, has not officially begun because it's a process with several months with specific temperature thresholds, but the trend is obvious based on satellite and ocean measurement data, he said.
"It certainly won't be welcome news for those living off the coast right now," Lautenbacher said. But he said that doesn't mean Atlantic seaboard residents should sell their homes.
You might at least consider storm shutters, however. And make sure your insurance is up to date.
Forecasters don't know how strong this La Nina will be. However, it typically means more hurricanes in the Atlantic, fewer in the Pacific, less rain and more heat for the already drought-stricken South, and a milder spring and summer in the north, Lautenbacher said. The central plains of the United States tend be drier in the fall during La Ninas, while the Pacific Northwest tends to be wetter in the late fall and early winter.
SciGuy has more. Let me just say again, "Argh!"
Now that hurricane season is officially over, we can begin hurricane prediction season for 2007.
Colorado State forecaster William Gray has predicted 14 named storms for next year, including three major hurricanes and four other hurricanes.He and fellow researcher Philip Klotzbach said there is a 64 percent chance of one of the major hurricanes - with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater - coming ashore. The long-term average probability is 52 percent, they said.
Still, they said said fewer hurricanes are likely to make landfall compared with 2005, which had the busiest and most destructive hurricane season on record.
In 2005, we saw 28 named storms, including 15 hurricanes, four of which hit the United States. The worst of those was Katrina, which leveled parts of the Gulf Coast.
Gray's prediction for 2005: 11 named storms in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast basins, and a 69 percent chance that at least one major storm - a category-3 hurricane or larger - would make landfall in the United States.
This year's season had nine named storms and five hurricanes, two of them major. That was considered a "near normal" season but fell short of predictions by Gray and government scientists.
Before the six-month season began June 1, Gray's team predicted 17 named storms and nine hurricanes for 2006, with five growing into major storms of Category 3 or higher.
No hurricanes hit the U.S. Atlantic coast in 2006 - only the 11th time that has occurred since 1945.
Gray and Klotzbach blamed their inaccurate prediction for the 2006 season on a late-developing El Nino and unusual levels of dry air.
It should be noted that they changed course late in the season this year when the El Nino effect was apparent. Better late than never.
Jeff Masters comments on this prediction and one other by the Tropical Storm Risk consortium. SciGuy thinks the whole thing is a bit useless this far out, but you know how the media loves numbers. And indeed, he has a story about this, as you'd expect. The one thing worth worrying about:
If El Nino weakens this winter, which is a tad earlier than expected, historically the chances of an active year go way up. The last time such a scenario transpired? 2005.
Guess we'll have to watch for that. It's a lot more enjoyable making fun of these guys when they overestimate, not when they underestimate.
Boy, remember when this hurricane season was going to make last year look like nothing? Those were the days, huh?
The forecast service AccuWeather said the northeast United States was "staring down the barrel of a gun," and respected forecasters were calling for 15 to 17 named storms.But like a meteorological Ishtar, the 2006 hurricane season, which officially ends today, failed to deliver.
Just nine named storms formed. The worst conditions the Northeast received came from Tropical Storm Beryl, with 50 mph winds and a 1-foot storm surge in July, and rain from remnants of Hurricane Ernesto, which wiped out one day's play of the U.S. Open tennis tournament in September.
The season's first storm, Alberto, yielded Houston's closest "brush" with the tropical weather. It came within 700 miles of Southeast Texas in June.
The relatively quiet season followed that of 2005, notable not only for its volume - last year's 28 named storms shattered the single-year record - but the beastliness of several storms, including Katrina, Rita and Wilma, three of the most intense hurricanes ever to traverse the Gulf of Mexico.
This year, Alberto and Ernesto brought the most trouble, causing about a dozen U.S. deaths and $100 million in damages. Last year's comparative totals were more than a hundredfold worse: in excess of 2,000 deaths and $120 billion in damages.
Actually, if those numbers are accurate, it's a thousandfold difference. Either way, it's no comparison. What the heck happened?
[Two factors] in particular are responsible for dampening this year's hurricane season, meteorologists say.One was greater-than-normal levels of dust, blown off the Sahel region of Western Africa over the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Storms need warm, moist air to develop and thrive. Dry air chokes them.
There also was considerable dust in 2005, but storms like Katrina and Rita developed farther westward in the Atlantic, closer to the United States, providing moister air during their formative stages.
The second factor, which came into play during the second half of the season, was El Nino, a natural warming of ocean temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific, which tends to moderate Atlantic hurricane seasons. Before this year's season began, scientists were not forecasting an El Nino.
Does this augur well for next year? Who knows?
Three months before El Nino developed this summer, the computer models still didn't see it coming. So, any chance of forecasting ocean conditions beginning next June may be somewhat hopeless.
"The bottom line," [Weather Underground's Jeff] Masters said, "is that we really don't understand how to make long-range forecasts that are all that good."
Would have been nice to have been told that before all the doom-and-gloom forecasts this spring, but better late than never. I'm of course happy things turned out this way, but I don't regret the money we spent this year on storm shutters, nor do I expect to cancel our plans to buy more of them to increase our coverage. It's fine to be giddy, but there's no call to be foolish.
This is either the best news you'll read today or a sure sign that we're all doomed. You decide.
Hurricane expert William Gray downgraded his forecast for the 2006 Atlantic storm season again today, predicting one more hurricane, two more named storms but no intense hurricanes.The new report calls for a below-average hurricane season, with a total of six hurricanes and 11 named storms.
Gray and fellow Colorado State University researcher Philip Klotzbach cited El Nino conditions for the reduced number of storms.
"August was inactive, but September had above-average activity," Klotzbach said. "We expect October to have below-average activity largely due to developing El Nino conditions in the central and eastern Pacific. November activity in El Nino years is very rare."
Three cheers for El Nino!
SciGuy breaks out the red cape, waves it wildly towards the Gulf Coast, and yells loudly "Hey, Fate! You're a big wussy!"
It may seem imprudent to tempt fate, but it's impossible to escape a singular fact: Historically, after this time of year, hurricanes strike the Lone Star State exceedingly rarely.Since reliable records were first kept in 1867, the National Hurricane Center reports just four Texas hurricane landfalls after Sept. 24. Of the four, the most recent was Jerry, a minimal Category 1 hurricane that made landfall on Oct. 16, 1989, near Galveston.
That's one hurricane every 35 years. So, is it safe to signal an all-clear?
"I am not sure, with as strange as the weather patterns have been over the past several years, and the emotions of the public, that that would be a good term to use," said Jill Hasling, president of Houston's nonprofit Weather Research Center.
"The waters in the Gulf are still warm, so I am not sure if I would sound the all-clear yet."
Y'all can do whatever you want. I'm not touching the bottled water till Thanksgiving is in the rearview mirror.
One year ago today, at about four o'clock in the morning, Tiffany, Olivia, Harry and I pulled into the driveway of Tiffany's cousin Emilie's house in Murphy, Texas, after an eighteen hour odyssey on I-45. I'd forgotten about the anniversary of Hurricane Rita until I saw a story on the local TV news last night. Seems I'm not alone in the forgetting department, unfortunately. Here's Google news on the topic if you want to refresh your own memory.
It kind of goes without saying that it has been a much quieter hurricane season this year. Considering that in 2005 we were facing Rita, and the named storm right now is Helene, that pretty much says it all. Read more about this year's storm season, recall what we were expecting back in June.
And just for comparison purposes, here's Olivia from the day before we bugged out last year. Click the More link to see a more recent picture, taken in early August in Portland.
Hostonist has a great interview with Dr. Jeff Masters of Wunderground.com, which is a great resource for all weather and hurricane junkies. Here's a taste to get you started:
Given the current forecasts and model predictions, what do you expect during the remainder of the 2006 season and how do you see it impacting those of us in Texas?The steering pattern is unchanged from early June, and favors recurvature out to sea of the major storms born from tropical waves coming off the coast of Africa. For this reason, plus the fact the atmosphere has been dryer and more stable than usual, I expect that we won't see any major hurricanes affecting the U.S. the remainder of hurricane season. Once we get into the first half of October, we may get one or two tropical storms or perhaps Category 1 hurricanes developing in the Gulf or Mexico or off the Carolina coast from the remnants of old cold fronts that hang out over the warm ocean waters. Developments of this nature usually move north or northeast, so I put the odds of Texas getting a Category 1 or 2 hurricane this season at 30%. The odds of a major hurricane for Texas are perhaps 10%.
[...]
How do you feel about the broadcast media and its impact on storm forecasting, particularly how ad revenues and ratings play into the way storms are reported?
Hurricanes coverage is too sensationalized and over-hyped for my liking. Hurricane have become entertainment. One of these days, a reporter is going to get seriously injured by flying debris. I've championed on my blog the idea of having reporters doing their show from a safe place out of the wind, and sending wind-up toys out into wind to be blown away for dramatic effect. TV stations can make a creative and dramatic demonstration of the wind's power without endangering the lives of reporters. Hurricanes are sensational enough in their own right, and do not need over-dramatization.
Definitely worth your time to read. Check it out.
The Huffington Post prints excerpts from interviews done with people involved with the evacuation of Hurricane Katrina victims to the George R. Brown convention center in Houston. The first subject is Lt. Col. and State Rep. Rick Noriega, who was the site manager. The following is from day one, after he had been named to the position by Mayor White and Harris County Judge Eckels in a morning meeting.
Have you ever kicked over an ant pile? When all the ants start running and scattering? It was a very challenging time. We had tasks that had to be accomplished before buses rolled in. We had to maintain some sense of command and control, and stay focused on those immediate tasks that we had to accomplish. We also had to establish our organizational structure. Those things had to happen in pretty quick order.Marathon Oil, CenterPoint Energy, and Continental and some other organizations came forward with resources. About 6:00pm, approximately two thousand mattresses and cots were laid out. CenterPoint and the staff at the George R. Brown were engineering the bathroom facilities and the showers. They started that night. They figured out how to make the first one, and once they made the first one--all the particular pieces were pre-cut, and so then it was just throwing them together. They worked around the clock all night long. By noon the next day, they constructed 80 showers.
By 6:00pm, we were operational.
By 9:00pm, we received our first buses. The Red Cross wanted to consolidate some of their shelters into the George R. Brown. We said OK, let's go ahead. We were in an enviable position because we had the opportunity to exercise our in-processing procedures. We had the tables set up one way, where they faced the doors. We were able to say no, we don't need it that way. You'll have people wrapped around outside, and we want to bring them all inside the building. Little things like that, to tweak the system. Unlike other facilities where they were just you know, wave after wave, without really having the opportunity to respond, we were able to get it set up pretty much how we wanted. Before the buses started rolling in.
I think I finally got to bed Friday night, very late. I stayed at the Hilton next door. Some rooms were set aside for a couple of us to stay there, so we could just go next door, shower, and come back. Get a few hours sleep, came back in.
The first seventy-two hours was critical to get everything established. I didn't get a lot of sleep those first few nights.
The following day, they diverted buses over to our location.
There's more there, and at The Katrina Experience. Check it out.
The Talent Show takes a look back at the horrors we all witnessed a year ago in New Orleans. Ray looks at his own writing from a year ago here and here. The lead story on the Chron is about some Katrina survivors who now call Houston home. Read and remember.
The state's plan for handling contraflow lanes in the event of a hurricane evacuation have been released.
Carol Dawson, deputy director of traffic operations of the Texas Department of Transportation, said the plan is "much more detailed" than the spur-of-the-moment plan utilized during Rita. The department, she said, has eliminated bottlenecks along the route, found ways to smooth the contraflow conversion and tested its plans in mock evacuation drills.In the plan announced by [Harris County Judge Robert] Eckels, incident coordinator for the 13-county evacuation region, threatened residents would flee the metro area on Interstates 10 and 45 and U.S. highways 290 and 59.
Dawson said the interstate routes - I-10 would be one-way from Brookshire to San Antonio, I-45 from near Conroe to Ennis - would be activated first. U.S. 290 would be one-way from FM 1960 to Burton.
U.S. 59, whose frequent intersections outside the urban area pose access problems, would be activated if needed.
An earlier version of this story gave the specifics:
Details of the contraflow plan for the major highways include:-- I-10: Contraflow lanes will begin east of Farm-to-Market Road 359 at Brookshire, and end at Loop 1604 in San Antonio.
-- I-45: Contraflow lanes will begin at State Highway 242 south of Conroe, and end at U.S. 247 near Ennis, about 40 miles south of Dallas.
-- U.S. 59: Contraflow lanes will begin south of Kingwood Drive and continue to Nacogdoches.
-- U.S. 290: Contraflow lanes will begin west of Farm-to-Market Road 1960 and continue to Farm-to-Market Road 1948 east of Brenham. Northbound traffic on State Highway 6 can turn west into contraflow lanes at U.S. 290.
The press release (PDF) contains a map. I'm a little concerned in that it looks from this like I-45 has already narrowed down to two lanes before SH242. I could be wrong about this, but if not, I'd be worried that traffic would be backed up because of that narrowing, which would partially defeat the purpose of the contraflow lanes. During the Rita evacuation, contraflow lanes were (eventually) opened as far south as Spring. Especially given that I-45 is the evacuation route for Galveston and other points south, I hope an effort will be made to start the contraflow lanes earlier than that.
Gov. Rick Perry's state fuel coordinator, Valero Energy executive Wade Upton, said coastal residents will be encouraged to keep their gas tanks half-filled during hurricane season.As a storm approaches, electronic highway signs and broadcast public service announcements will urge them to keep tanks totally filled.
Scott Fisher, an executive with the Austin-based Texas Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, said gasoline tanks at service stations along the escape routes will be totally filled. Usually, he said, economic factors dictate that the tanks, which can hold up to 12,000 gallons of fuel, are only partially filled.
Fi