So, there is this thing I have been doing for the last two years: once a storm has a name, I follow it ceremoniously until it is over. See, the predictions are kind of like predicting where an eighteen-wheeler moving 90 miles per hour will go if there is no person at the wheel—you just aren’t going to feel safe being anywhere on either side of that road until it is past you. This time Rita is that truck and the straits are that road.

The thing that makes it ugly is that once it makes it to the Keys, the water temperature is almost ninety degrees which is only going to make it stronger. The five computer models that have been run on it all show it skirting mainland Florida, following the Keys and then travelling through the Gulf. Four of those point to Texas and one, you guessed it, to Louisiana. Of the four pointing to Texas, three of them show a path that would put most of the people evacuated from the Superdome in the path of another storm. Now the models are not known for their accuracy and any change in any variable can alter the path.

Let’s hope this one isn’t another monster.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2005 at 9:47 am and is filed under hurricanes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.