Rita A Strong and Beautiful Storm
Hurricane Rita has that classic strong hurricane look on today's satellite images. She is now a Category 5 (165 mph sustained winds) with little to slow her down or weaken her in the Gulf, with one possible exception - there is a spot where there is a lack of tropical cyclone heat potential in her path. She knocked out the Dry Tortugas Buoy, which hasn't reported since early this morning (when it had 75 mph wind gusts). The central Gulf doesn't have much for weather observations... probably 42001 (in the central Gulf) is the next one to look at... it was reporting waves rising from 3 feet yesterday to over 10 feet already today.
The FGBL1 Oil Rig Cam (off the coast of Galveston) is still up and going, even though the news says that the rigs were evacuated this morning. Oil prices rose on this news, even though Rita is days away from the nearest oil field.
Just for fun I had the boys downstairs draw up a map showing all tropical storms that have passed through Rita's current position. That map is shown below. As the tracks cross, the colors increase. In theory, it would be almost impossible for a storm in that position to move southwest at this point. Equally unlikely would be a Brownsville, TX or Mexico hit. But does this graphic really tell us the whole story? We only have Tropical Storm records back about 150 years. If we had a thousand years, that would be much more useful, but for now we've got to work with what data we have. Right now the forecast model predictions and upper-level atmospheric patterns are more important, and they are still foretelling of a hit somewhere on the central Texas coast.
