Anybody wanna bet that when Rita hits...

[reBel_gyrl]

Texas will be up and running before New Orleans even has all it's bodies out of the water?

This whole Administration makes me sick.

[SheilaT]

1. Maybe,

maybe not. If Rita hits as a strong Cat 4 or even a Cat 5, it will do the total destruction you saw along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Most of the coverage of everything post Katrina concentrated on New Orleans because the flooding made things so much worse than the hurricane just by itself. Meanwhile, the fact that the coast of Mississippi looked a lot like coasts in the Indian Ocean after the tsunami last year got lost.

But the equivalent of a tsunami is on its way to Texas, and no matter where exactly it hits the destruction is going to be immense. Keep in mind that crews from all over the U.S. have already been working in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to get the power back. I'm not at all sure how many out-of-area crews are still there, but there can't be a lot of extras to send to Texas starting Saturday.

We had a major October snowstorm here (Kansas City area) On October 22, 1996. 8-10 inches of heavy, wet snow toppled trees and power lines, and even with the help of out-of-town crews, it took nearly a week to restore all the power to everyone. On January 31, 2002 an ice storm took down trees and power lines and again it took a week to get all the power back. And in both cases there were maybe a couple hundred thousand people without power, not millions, and homes were not totally destroyed (although some were damaged badly by falling trees).

Unless Rita weakens significantly, which doesn't look likely at this point, it's going to wipe out the shore where it hits.