jonathanwatmough.com

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO !!!!!!

Power is back and we have AC again. We made it through the day using sterno(tm) to heat water for tea, and heating soup. There was no damage, unless you count a few leaves being blown off the trees around the house.

So, yeah, dodged a bullet on this one.

Man, it sure is nice to be under AC again. Sweeet!

Just sitting back enjoying a beer and doing the ‘Buffy Personality Test’, linked to from Epiphany.

These are the results:

Faith

63% amorality, 72% passion, 36% spirituality, 36% selflessness
Faith is a powerhouse, and you might be, too. Passion-driven, down-to-earth, and willing to do what it takes to get things done and have a good time doing them, she is tough and sexy. Now, this test didn’t rate your sexiness, but with these kinds of traits, that’s probably true as well.

You rate as one of the most dynamic characters of the Buffy universe.

Congratulations!

Up here in Spring, Texas, we were treated to a great sunset under the clouds, and the rain and wind is picking up just a little.

According to the satellite pictures we are pretty much just right under the first outer bands. So nothing too serious happening yet on this side of town.

The story is a bit rougher down in Galveston where some flooding is occurring with winds gusting up to 50 mph or so.

Estimated time of arrival for the worst of the winds is about 3am local time.

NOAA provide a Java applet for report METARS. These are automated report from airfields that are used primarily by pilots. The picture shows 30 knot winds in the worst affected areas.

Local 2 are reporting that Rita will hit landfall well inside of Louisiana. This is borne out by the pressure readings on the METAR.

Look at the western Louisiana coast, and you see the lowest pressures well inside Louisiana, right at the Eastern edge of the projected cone of uncertainty.

From the Weather Channel, Hurricane Rita has weakened further, to a category 3 storm.

According to Fox News, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans is under waist deep water again, due to a levee break.

This is due to the heavy rain bands in advance of Hurricane Rita.

Local 2 Houston weather is showing that Hurricane Rita has moved to a more Northern path. Estimates as of about 10:30am CDT show the eye of the hurricane coming onshore much nearer the Texas Louisiana border than was previously thought.

This is good news for Houston, and Galveston especially.

Governor Rick Perry praised the evacuation airlift effort in both Beaumont and Ellington, where many people with special needs, the infirm, elderly, bed-ridden, have been airlifted out of the immediate path of the storm.

By mid-afternoon, Houston and East of I-45 should experience hurricane force winds. Rita has weakened somewhat but is still listed as a category 4 storm.

Winds have dropped to 140 mph, although these should come down as the pressure at the storm has risen to 930 millibars.

The storm is 100 miles off the Texas coast and moving at 10 mph, so we can expect the start of this within 10 hours or so.

Mayor White is advising that if you has not already evacuated, then this it is now too late, and you should shelter in place. Basic requirements include a gallon of water per person per day, and adequate non-perishable food. Please remove loose items from around your house and help to make your neighborhood a safer place when the winds hit.

All our thoughts go out to the victims on the Metro Bus.

I just made a trip from Spring down to Westchase. This is about a 70 mile roundtrip. I took Spring Cypress and Steubner Airline down to the tollway then round to Westheimer. Traffic was extremely light with very few people out and about. Ironically, it’s a beautiful night in Houston. Warm and breezy. No sign yet of the impending storm.

I saw only one gas station that had gas, on the way down, and it ws closed a couple of hours later when I returned. I saw no other gas stations that still had gas prices up. Obviously if you have an empty tank, then you are SOL right now.

No power problem yet in Houston, but the lack of people lends it an eerie feel. Once I reached my apartment, I shutdown my computers and moved them to the kitchen, and bagged up some documents and stuffed them and some other items into my cupboards. To be honest, as long as I make it through the storm, I’ll survive everything else getting trashed. I wanted to be fast just in case there’s any impending lawlessness starting, and I felt kind of exposed leaving a car full of gas in an apartment parking lot in my part of town.

I picked up my old IBM Thinkpad on the way out and made an extremely uneventful drive back up the beltway, Bammel, Steubner Airline and Spring Cypress.

In case anyone is reading this, the beltway is near empty, and 249 and 290 look empty, at least as much as you can see from the beltway. I think I counted about 20 or so stalled cars between Bammel N Houston and Westheimer, so it’s maybe not quite as bad as the media are making out.

Definitely no gas around though. And not too much sign of the Guard yet, though I saw a couple of trucks heading South on the beltway.

The news is full of how little gas there is available. I flew into IAH last night and filled up at the airport. It was busy but no panic. I took Lee road North to 1960, then West to Kuykendahl. On 1960, on the East side, there were plenty of gas stations. it’s not a major route from anywhere else, so it might be worth a try if you need gas badly. Most traffic in Houston seems to be on the West side of the Hardy toll road.

Hope this helps someone out. Maybe tanker trucks in Houston could ‘siphon’ from gas stations on the East side that still have plenty of supplies.