The news just said Hurricane Rita is the biggest storm to EVER hit the Texas coast, and only the second cat 5 to make landfall!! Sustained winds of 175mph with gusts of 215mph!!!! Anyone else hear this about the storm?

Everyone really needs to take this storm serisously, you saw what Katrina did to LA, and this storm is wayyy more powerful. I think I'm gonna head out tomorrow sometime, maybe Austin, San Antonio, who knows.

And I agree people are overreacting about some things, you don't need to go out and buy 4,000 gallons of gas.

 

At my work, we have no more bullets. Either people are getting ready to protect or do what they did in Lousiana, and i'm not staying around to find out. I'm going to Panama City Beach, FL for a couple days with family, my mom finally came around and decided to leave. Everybody stay safe and God Bless.

 

CNN said third strongest hurricane in recorded history.
And yeah you should buy 4,000 gallons of gas cause by the end of tommorow its gonna skyrocket past $3 again!

 

3rd strongest storm in the Atlantic Basin in recorded history.

It'll probably only be a cat 4 when it hits land though, I'd be very surprised if it's still a cat 5 Friday night when it hits.

 

a few people tried finding hotels for houston family and NONE out of 45 hotels they called had room. looks like DFW hotels are full.

 

The worst distruction was east of N.O.

Rita looks like one bad bitch......
It's almost time to wake up Leroy...

 

*IF* Rita makes landfall as a Category 5 storm (which I don't believe it will), it would have been the 4th to make U.S. landfall in recorded history. Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, Camille, and Andrew are the only recorded storms to make landfall as a category 5.

It is correct that Rita is the 3rd most intense atlantic hurricane recorded, at 897mbar. (Behind 1935 Labor Day @ 892 and Gilbert @ 888)

If you want to see a BIG storm, go look up Supertyphoon Tip. Pressure of 870mbar, sustained 190mph winds, and a circulation diameter of 1350 miles. (To put that in perspective, it would nearly cover up the entire western half of the United States.)

 

as long as DFW doesnt get hit too hard, now we're gonna have evacuees from NO and Htown lol

 

i'm down for some evacs from h-town, it would make for some great meets, everyone knows that all the fast cars are down south. HA HA HA, come on up here guys.

 

damn ryan.. emo

 

ya come on up, i could host the fat head brothers lol

 

hope it's not too bad up here

 

where are you finding the mbar info at?
i've looked around weather.com and havent found it..

 

wunderground.com

great site......

 

Last I heard the news guy say that it wasnt such thing as a cat 6 hurricane, but if it was, that this would be it.

 

definitely not going ot be a 5 when it hits....hopefully

 

why does everyone think it won't be a cat 5 when it hits? Warm water fuels hurricanes, and gulf water is warmer than the pure atlantic. It will be a Cat 5.

 

Google found a bunch of information for me last night... Intellicast is probably the best site i've found for mbar information, they update it fairly regularly.

http://www.intellicast.com/Local/USN...=none&pid=none


which btw, as of 10am CST, the storm's pressure had dropped to 907mbar.

 

they said something about the air closer to the coast being dryer right now....they never get crap right though...it will probably go straight west and tag mexico

 

because contrary to popular belief, the gulf water does not get warmer the closer you get to land.

I'll try to explain the best I can using the following map.

The gulf of mexico waters are warmer than the main atlantic basin waters are, so once it gets into the gulf, it starts to pick up strength. The water temperatures just into the gulf between florida and cuba. Rita's path led her over the bahamas and the keys, so it caught some land and did not let it gain alot of strength at that point.

Then the storm entered back into the gulf, and once it reached the channel of water that enters into the gulf of mexico between cuba and the yucatan peninsula (read, those waters are significantly warmer than the rest of the gulf, by 4-8 degrees). This is EXACTLY where Rita picked up all her power from.

As you can see on the storm tracker, the storm has passed to the west of this warmer channel and has entered into the cooler waters, which is why we have already seen the storm decrease from a 175mph 897mbar storm, to a 165mph 907mbar storm. This doesn't seem like a lot at this point, but it has only made a very small shift in water temperature. As the storm continues to move towards land, the surface temperature continues to decrease. The water depth also decreases, which means that the storm begins to pull the cooler water from below the surface to feed the storm.

Warmer waters = increased power, Cooler waters = decreased power. This storm has already been through the warmest waters and from this point on will only continue to weaken.