Rita heads Strait through to the Gulf of Mexico by Susan Powell
On Wednesday morning Hurricane Rita was upgraded to a Category Three storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale as it moved through the Florida Straits past Key West.
Having originally been forecast to move across southern Florida, only the far southern tip and the Keys felt the worst of what Rita had to offer. Reports of storm surge-related flooding and some wind damage have been received, but the strongest winds (gusting over 100 mph (160 km/h)) stayed offshore. At 5pm local time at the Keys International Airport the winds were blowing at about 60 mph (96 km/h), enough to leave 24,000 homes in southern Florida without electricity.
As a Category Three storm, Rita currently has winds blowing over 115 mph (184 km/h). The hurricane is now moving into the calm warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where it will have plenty of time to strengthen even further, just as Katrina did three weeks ago. Before landfall Rita is expected to reach high Category Four, with winds over 140 mph (224 km/h) and even higher gusts.
There are several days yet to pass before Rita is expected to make landfall so it is too early to say with any real certainty where landfall will be. Current forecasts suggest Rita will come ashore on the Texas coastline south of Houston early Saturday morning UK time. However, this track could shift to the left and bring Rita into northern Mexico, or shift right and Louisiana will be in the hurricane’s path.
As a result of this possibility, New Orleans’s mayor has ordered residents returning to the beleaguered city to turn back. Even if the storm does not strike Louisiana directly, the rise in water levels combined with battering waves ahead of the hurricane could still be bad news for the previously weakened levees.
Galveston, a Texan city just to the southeast of Houston, was devastated by a Category 4 hurricane on the 8th September 1900. In the days before satellite technology could provide five day’s warning of a possible hurricane, people were unaware of what was about to hit and over 8,000 people lost their lives. Today the modern early warning systems and procedures are in place, and officials have ordered an evacuation of the city.
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