Hurricane Rita ( Bad News For Gulf )

1 am cdt from NOAA

AT 1 AM CDT...0600Z...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE RITA WAS LOCATED NEAR
LATITUDE 24.8 NORTH... LONGITUDE 87.6 WEST OR ABOUT 540 MILES...
870 KM... EAST-SOUTHEAST OF GALVESTON TEXAS AND ABOUT 645 MILES...
1040 KM...EAST-SOUTHEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI TEXAS.

RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 9 MPH ...15 KM/HR. A
GENERAL WESTWARD TO WEST-NORTHWESTWARD MOTION AT A SLIGHT FASTER
FORWARD SPEED IS EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER INDICATE THAT
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS REMAIN NEAR 175 MPH...280 KM/HR...WITH
HIGHER GUSTS. RITA IS A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY FIVE
HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN
INTENSITY ARE LIKELY DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS

Oh my god. Guys honestly what country do you think your living in? Two catastrophic hurricane will not bring our economy anywhere near crashing point. Now lets say another 3-4 storms come along and hit fresh unhit parts of the US. Then I would start to worry.

My bets say this hurricane will be a world record with winds over 250MPH. But hopefully the lord or whatever power live above us will take care of us!

Some might say mother nature has it in for the USA at the moment.

Hope everyone has the means to get well out of the way of Rita.

(alright guys.. you can stop sending mail to the mods/staff about my cussing... i got the point the first time i checked my mail... which has over 8 mails regarding this issue.... im not doing it again.... my apologies... and you only have to tell me once... carry on... just thought id mention this here... i thought it would be cool after the last mail i got... but i just recieved another one about it... so im hoping it stops because this issue has stopped... good job guys in looking out for the board... im serious.. no sarcasm)


so yeah the storm is huge and its heading my way. buy beer or buy water?

decisions ... decisions.


meanwhile a ufo got shot down over the coast of florida.

jet blue made an odd landing in cali.

whats going on with our nation?

im scared.

umm buy beer.

Latest vortex message from the hurricane hunters reports a max flight level wind of 165kts. That MAY be enough for an upgrade to 180mph with the 5am.

"MAX FL WIND 165 KT NE QUAD 05:34:00 Z
STADIUM EFFECT VERY VISIBLE IN MOONLIGHT
FREQUENT LIGHTNING WITHIN EYEWALL"

That was part of the hunter report.

can anyone of you all respond or comment as to the pattern of these hurricanes...

im hearing that they expect it not to hold this intensity for long... that before it hits landfall it will be a cat 4.... that most huricanes drop in in intensity before landfal... and this thing is cycling (typical)... so they think that when it nears landfall it will be at least lower cat 5 if not cat 4 because of cycling.


good job with these updates guys... really. im reading all of them... this is my first source of hurricane rita update being that you all are so quick. thnx again. keep them coming.


lets hope this storm is all hype.

Must be terfying being subjected to the wrath of these hurricanes, hope the thing desapates before it hits land. Good luck to all concerned. The barometric pressures must be dropping to the floor. tropical cyclone--Typhoon Kyle, 1972 I believe, recorded at Guam---872 MB, now thats just ridiculous, didnt even know the scale went down that far.

Still no real change in intensity according to the NHC 5 AM advisory (4 AM CDT):

REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT INDICATE
THAT MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS REMAIN NEAR 175 MPH...280 KM/HR...WITH
HIGHER GUSTS. THIS MAKES RITA A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY
FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN
INTENSITY ARE LIKELY DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 70 MILES...110 KM...
FROM THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP
TO 185 MILES...295 KM.

THE LATEST MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE ESTIMATED FROM REPORTS BY THE
HURRICANE HUNTER IS 897 MB...26.49 INCHES. THIS MEANS RITA IS THE
THIRD MOST INTENSE HURRICANE IN TERMS OF PRESSURE IN THE ATLANTIC
BASIN.

Full Report: NOAA National Hurricane Center

[edit on 9/22/2005 by djohnsto77]

To quote from Michael C. Ruppert's article,

While I had serious doubts about America’s ability to recover from Katrina, I am certain that – barring divine intervention – the United States is finished; not only as a superpower, but possibly even as a single, unified nation with the arrival of Hurricane Rita.

Well, Michael C. Ruppert, must be a bit more than concerned to put his credability on the line like that.

That's about as negative thing as i've heard about any country period. Considering Uncle Sam has done its best and suceeded to pull the first world out of some pretty sticky situations for a long long time, this wont be the end, im fairly sure.

That is a little bit of a strong statement. I believe this storm will make the 6th or 7th major hurricane to hit the U.S. in the past two seasons. Crazy numbers.

Looks like the eye wall is starting to cycle and the intensity lessen--at least for a little while.

Rita`s predicted path slightly changed. She will now go to the east of Houston. This will mean more rain to Louisiana...

I found this very nice paper on "annular hurricanes", it is fairly lengthy and available as a pdf file, in html I couldn't get the graphics but it is very detailed and I post it here for your perusal.

Annular Hurricanes

. Features of annular hurricanes

Before the features associated with annular hurricanes can be examined, annular hurricane cases must be iden-tified. The IR imagery is the visual means by which we determine whether a storm is an annular hurricane.

An annular hurricane is identified if the hurricane persists for at least 3 h in an axisymmetric state defined by the following:

1) the hurricane has a normal-to-large-sized circular eye surrounded by a single band of deep convection containing the inner-core region and

2) the hurricane has little or no convective activity beyond this annulus of convection. The use of digital IR data alsoallows for the development of an objective technique of identifying storms with these characteristics, which will be addressed in section 4. Note that a hurricane is considered an annular hurricane only when these conditions are met; before and after the annular phase, the hurricane is considered an asymmetric storm. The six hurricanes that meet these subjective criteria during our period of study are listed in Table 1 along with ranges of satellite estimates of the range of eye sizes and best-track-determined intensities.

PDF file, 1.13mb "graphics work"

ED: add pdf link



[edit on 9/22/05 by JacKatMtn]

Here is the 7 am cdt Report Noaa

AT 7 AM CDT...1200Z...THE EYE OF HURRICANE RITA WAS LOCATED NEAR
LATITUDE 25.2 NORTH...LONGITUDE 88.3 WEST OR ABOUT 490 MILES
SOUTHEAST OF GALVESTON TEXAS AND ABOUT 595 MILES EAST-SOUTHEAST OF
CORPUS CHRISTI TEXAS.

RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 9 MPH AND THIS GENERAL
MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE FOR THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE ESTIMATED NEAR 170 MPH WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. THIS MAKES RITA A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY
FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. A SLOW WEAKENING TREND
IS FORECAST BUT RITA IS EXPECTED TO REACH THE COAST LATE FRIDAY OR
EARLY SATURDAY AS A MAJOR HURRICANE...AT LEAST CATEGORY THREE
E LATEST MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE RECENTLY MEASURED BY A HURRICANE
HUNTER AIRCRAFT WAS 907 MB...26.78 INCHES.

7 am cdt Report Accu Weather

Rita is an historic Category 5 hurricane, now packing sustained winds
of 170 mph with gusts to near 215 mph. This is the season's second catastrophic hurricane. As of 8:00 a.m. EDT, Rita was centered near 25.2 north and 88.3 west. This places Rita 595 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas and 490 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas. The minimum central pressure was reported by hurricane hunter aircraft at 907 millibars (26.78 inches of mercury). This storm has been the 3rd most intense Atlantic basin hurricane ever recorded. Rita is currently moving to the west-northwest at 9 mph. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 70 miles, and tropical storm-force winds extend outward up to 185 miles from the center of circulation. The storm will fluctuate in strength over next 24 hours

To quote from Michael C. Ruppert's article,

While I had serious doubts about America’s ability to recover from Katrina, I am certain that – barring divine intervention – the United States is finished; not only as a superpower, but possibly even as a single, unified nation with the arrival of Hurricane Rita.

Methinks Mr. Ruppert is just a tad melodramatic... If anything, the US has proven time and time again, that national disasters bring the nation closer together, not drive it apart...

To reiterate though, if you're in the path of this storm...get inland, as far as you can. Looks like most are taking this one seriously after lessons learned from Katrina...that's a good thing.

all these hurricanes are definetly from global warming. whos with me on this?

Originally posted by krossfyter
can anyone of you all respond or comment as to the pattern of these hurricanes...

im hearing that they expect it not to hold this intensity for long... that before it hits landfall it will be a cat 4.... that most huricanes drop in in intensity before landfal... and this thing is cycling (typical)... so they think that when it nears landfall it will be at least lower cat 5 if not cat 4 because of cycling.

what sayeth you?

To try to answer this:

The cat 5 hurricanes can not maintain this strong strength for long periods of time. They experiance eyewall reconstruction. Which normally does not take long but causes some weakness.

Also there is cooler water between Galveston and Rita that she must go over. then the water gets warm again before Rita makes landfall. This makes it very difficult for forcasters to predict strength at impact.

I am not a forcaster but hope this helps.

[edit on 22-9-2005 by Harry55]

Even if Rita makes landfall as a Cat. 4 hurricane, the storm surge will still be as of a Cat. 5 storm surge. The cycling and movement of the water continues for longer than the hurricane itself. Expect a massive storm surge...