Oh shit it's my mother!

Well okay not really. But Hurricane Rita, my mother's namesake, is currently rumbling through the Gulf of Mexico at a rather rapid clip, with sustained winds of 140 MPH+. It's expected to become a Category 5 hurricane shortly and make landfall in the Galveston, Texas area within 70 hours. Houston and Galveston are going to get smashed to hell if this thing stays strong... there are also major oil and gas fields between this hurricane and landfall, so that's going to be bad as well. Some weather service bouys have already been yanked from anchor by the hurricane, so any big rigs or platforms are going to get tossed around quite a bit. People are evacuating from the areas projected to be hit more than ever before since what happened with Katrina, but the damage is still expected to be catastrophic. Hopefully the loss of life will not be as pronounced, and hopefully some good wind shear will develop and weaken Rita before she hits shore.

For sheer "oh christ" factor, here is a picture of the same region that Rita is going to hit when it was struck by a tropical storm in the 1990s (Alicia, it stalled out over the area and dumped a lot of rain; imagine that this is storm surge instead):



That is an interstate highway.

This hurricane season has been batshit insane. Katrina alone made it the most deadly and most expensive in history, and the hits just keep on coming... for the first time in history, the NHC is going to most likely run out of names for hurricanes and have to start using the Greek alphabet to name them instead. The hurricane season ends November 30th, and we've already had a full season's worth of storms within the past couple of months. Historically, September is the busiest month for such storms, so we'll see what happens.

Oh, and that's just the Atlantic. Check this out:



It's from a few days ago, in the eastern Pacific. What you see there is Hurricane Jova (Category 2), Hurricane Kenneth (barely a Category 3), and Tropical Storm Lidia, all lined up in a neat little row. Since the picture was taken they have moved in a more northwesterly direction, out into the open Pacific to where they'll most likely become rather destructive typhoons.

So in conclusion, geez mom you should really not be so angry. I know you hate Texas, but seriously... seesh.