That means the primary evacuation for the core of the city is along four freeways to the north, west, and southwest, and only two of them parallel the old US highway they replaced; the other two were built over the original roads, or were completely new. Worse, there is a bottleneck on the north side where there is not even a tertiary road net, let alone secondary. From Conroe to Huntsville, the four lanes of I-45 are it. I’m a big believer in letting the secondary roads take some of the load, but the government seems to love shoving everyone from one area into a pre-planned and overloaded evacuation route.

I have to run; if I get a chance, I may develop some thoughts and post them later on Houbog.

As for Rita, you’re absolutely right, Rita was far from “minimal” — it was one of the 6 most intense hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic basin!! If the conventional wisdom in Texas has evolved to the point where people think Rita was naught but hype, things are far worse than I realized. Rita not only “might,” but definitely would, have been as bad as the hype — maybe worse — if it had not turned east and weakened substantially. And, as I keep pointing out, there’s simply no way to predict, 2 or 3 days in advance, with any precision or confidence, whether such twists and turns will occur. The fear of utter devastation from Rita was completely justified.

As for the evacuation “fiasco,” you’re right that a huge factor was the timing, “less than a month after another city floods.” As I understand it, local officials had an orderly evacuation plan — people in this zone evacuate first, then people in this zone, etc., and people in this and that zone don’t need to evacuate at all — but folks simply didn’t follow the plan because they were so freaked out, post-Katrina. That’s understandable, but it’s the exact opposite of the problem that disaster planners usually face: generally, you can’t get half the people who need to evacuate to leave; with Rita, you had a bunch of people leaving who didn’t need to do so! So, yes, it was a fiasco, but it was a singular one, unlikely to recur ever again. The circumstances were truly freakish. And, although the evacuation ultimately proved more deadly than the storm itself, that’s only clear in hindsight. At the time, there was every reason in the world to fear a calamity from Rita.

Minimal hurricanes are mildly dangerous, moreso if they drop lots of rain — but I’ve driven to work in the middle of one, in a dinky Chevette (which will date about when it happened, heh).

Anyway, the good news is, Edouard didn’t strengthen at all overnight — in fact, he weakened a bit, and is only now getting more organized, back to where he was originally — so that significantly alleviates my worry about the possibility of rapid intensification bringing the storm above Cat. 1. That possibility was always small; now, it’s even smaller.

I may cocoon at home on Tuesday, but I cannot see taking the risk associated with evacuating. Instead, if Edouard continues to Houston, I will call in sick Tuesday. Tell him I have trouble with my eyes — can’t see coming in when the weather is so bad.

http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?showforum=15

Humidity is high, and it’s already raining here. Not directly related to Edouard, but part of the same conditions that spawned it. This isn’t conclusive by itself, but it’s a bad sign that it may be a very wet storm, rather than strong — like Allison, which did most of its damage _after_ dropping below T.S. strength.