Pretty bad, but no where near as bad as Katrina

Rita at its peak strength was the third largest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, with 180 mph winds! The storm itself occupied the entire Gulf of Mexico. At the risk of sounding like I'm jumping on an ever-growing bandwagon, it is fair to say that the recent increase in hurricanes over the past 5 years or so can be correlated to global climate change. I've discussed the data which indicates that this is occurring on other postings on this site, but the evidence is rather compelling. The weather is getting stranger; in fact, last December a hurricane hit Argentina and Brazil. In 500 years of recorded history, a hurricane never formed in the South Atlantic! 3 years ago, there were 2 hurricanes which formed out in the Atlantic in the middle of January. Remember that these cyclones are fed by warm ocean water. It is unusual to have such warm water anywhere in the North Atlantic in the dead of winter. It is even more unusual to have a hurricane form out there in January. Whatever your hypothesis may be, meteorologists agree that we are entering a period of greater hurricane development. Since the 1970's, we were at the low end of the cycle. Now for the next 20 years or so, coastal areas will become increasingly more vulnerable to hurricanes. This is troubling because of our desire to build close to the ocean. Luckily, Rita weakened before it hit land. It hit an area close to the border between Texas and Louisiana. It did miss Houston and Galveston, which are very heavily populated. In the final analysis, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The media of course, in an attempt to elongate a particular story, made much more out of this storm than what it really was. Yes, it did cause some damage, but cut the melodramatic reporting that we're seeing from the major networks.

The Press exaggerated this one. I have friends and a relative in the Houston area and they are all fine. There wasn't near the damage that the media made it sound like, although there certainly was some in places like Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Port Arthur. In the part of Louisiana where I live, we got some desperately-needed rain. Best of all, no one was killed. In fact, we've still got a lot of evacuees from Katrina here.

Fortunatly this turned out to be a relatively insignificant event.