About the middle of last week, hurricane Rita was shambling along, picking up energy from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. By Wednesday, it was being reported to be a category 5 storm, and projections were that its path would bring it to the Dallas area with enough energy to still be a category 1 or 2. Meanwhile, we were supposed to be going to Lake Murray State Park (Oklahoma) to spend the weekend with the Dallas bike club.
I've never experienced a hurricane and didn't know what to expect or how to prepare. Lots of people just stock up with water and batteries and board up the windows to ride it out. I have experienced enough Texas thunderstorms with 40-60mph straight line winds to know how much damage they can do, and I had to figure a hurricane of any category had to be worse. Sweetie had experienced Hugo when she lived in North Carolina, and she was concerned about leaving the cats for the weekend. So we cancelled our room reservation at Lake Murray lodge, bought some extra water and batteries, and started redding up the garage to try and make room for the cars inside.
To make a long story short, Rita ended up making landfall around Port Arthur, Texas, as a category 2 or 3. By the time it got as far north as Dallas, it had dissipated to a tropical depression and swung out to the east of us, more toward Texarkana. We had very windy day, yesterday, but that was about it. We had been concerned about whether or not our house was on high enough ground to be safe from flooding, should we get the predicted 6-10" of rain, but was part of a narrow strip that didn't get a drop.
In the end, we missed out on a fun weekend, and the rain would have been good for my drought-stricken lawn; but we did get some work done on the garage, and we didn't have any wind or flood damage. Looking at the pictures coming out of Galveston, Houston, and the bayous of Louisana this morning... it was a good trade.
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