Jay Currie » Rita

Getting it Right

jay — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 07:49:13 +0000

Yes, school buses work rather better when they leave town early and often taking the poor out of harms way. New Orleans taught some lessons but I suspect the biggest lesson was to follow the plan.

Rita: How low will she go?

jay — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 04:46:48 +0000

At the center of a hurricane is the eye. That dot in the middle of the cloud. In that eye the air pressure drops. A lot. In huricanne Rita’s case, a whole lot.

Hurricane Gilbert (888 mb, 1988)

The Great Labor Day Hurricane (892 mb, 1935)

Hurricane Rita (897 mb, 2005)

Hurricane Allen (899 mb, 1980)

Hurricane Katrina (902 mb, 2005)

Hurricane Camille (905 mb, 1969)

Those numbers are from Jeff Masters at Weather Underground who is worth reading for the science and the weather in the Gulf

Cat 5

jay — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 23:22:53 +0000

As the death toll from Hurricane Katrina passed 1,000, oil prices hit $68 a barrel and Rita, potentially more powerful, bore down on the Texas coast. It is expected to hit land on Saturday. Officials in New Orleans issued a warning that even 3in of rain could overwhelm the damaged protective levees. Army engineers worked round the clock to make repairs.

Rita, with wind speeds of 165mph, is expected to make landfall southeast of Houston, near the coastal city of Galveston, the scene of a hurricane that killed up to 12,000 people in 1900. Standing in its presumed path are three of the country’s five largest refineries.
times of londonLooks as if the folks in Texas have learned the lessons Katrina taught. They are in full evacuation and they are making sure the sick, the old and the poor are at the front of the line.

But you can’t evacuate oil refineries.

Update 21/12/05: “While looking for something else, I discovered your web site “Archive for the ‘Rita’ Category” (URL = http://jaycurrie.info-syn.com/?cat=20). In it you list the number dead from Galveston, Texas’ 1900 storm at 12,000. Please correct that to 6-8 thousand.

Sign me a Galvestonian with great-grandparents who remember that storm.

Rita

jay — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 20:50:23 +0000

It is possible that hurricane Rita will have an even greater economic impact than Katrina. A good deal of the American oil and gas industry’s refining capacity is on the Gulf coast of Texas. Which is, on the projections, where Rita, as she goes to Cat 4, is expected to make landfall. Galveston and Houston are potentially at risk.

“The Houston area is ground zero of the refining industry,” said Rick Mueller, an analyst with Energy Security Analysis Inc. in Tilburg, the Netherlands. “If it suffers the scope of damage caused to refineries in Louisiana by Katrina, we could see rationing and queues at the gas pump. This is something OPEC can’t do anything to remedy.”
bloomberg

There is already speculation about $5.00 a gallon gas. Evacuation will be better than it was for Katrina. There is a good chance fewer lives will be lost. But the potential to cripple the US economy is much greater than Katrina’s.

“Between 15 and 20 percent of the nation’s refining capacity is at risk from this hurricane,” said Bill O’Grady, assistant director of market analysis at A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. “A Category 3 or above storm is going to down power lines and refiners will lose power. It will take at least 1 1/2 to 2 weeks before they come back.”

If there is flooding the situation would be much worse, O’Grady said.
bloomberg

With luck Rita may stall, or blow out, or hit where there are very few people and refining capacity. But that’s luck and there is no predicting it.