Stardate 11:15 Saturday
Woke up about 8:30am. There is really not news to report from the westside of Houston. It was about the same as a good thunderstorm. Some tree limbs down. My parents lost power. There is still no gas and no stores open at this point. It is still a bit windy but is dying down. I lost cable so will have to post pictures later. I am on the wireless internet so the celluar network is still working.

Restarting the city will be a massive effort and getting the people back will be another huge issue. Bill White said it best last night "In a free society you really can't control people" It is good that everyone will hopefully pull together and keep calm.

Stardate 1:34 Saturday morning. Radar shows the eyewall just coming on shore on the Texas La boarder. The news shows both local and national are still trying to make a story out of this. "Downed tree limbs and some power outages" oh my

multiply knots by 1.15077 to get mph

Streets are finally wet here on the Westside of Houston. I think I saw a flash of lighting.

Stardate Friday 11:36 Wayne Delfachino from Ch 13 was doing the wind is dire and threatening thingy on TV from Beaumont

Here are the winds from the shore at Sabine river

11:00 pm	N ( 357 deg )	62 kts
10:50 pm	N ( 357 deg )	58 kts
10:40 pm	N ( 358 deg )	59 kts
10:30 pm	N ( 359 deg )	58 kts
10:20 pm	N ( 359 deg )	56 kts
10:10 pm	N ( 0 deg )	55 kts

Just remembered the real time wind system for Galveston bay

VALID TIME
2248 (CDT) 09/23/05


Station: Morgans Point
WIND SPEED: 34 KNOTS
GUSTING TO: 43 KNOTS
DIRECTION: 357 T
AIR TEMP.: 77.2 F
BARO PRESS.: 994.1 mbar

Star date Friday 10:48pm. Went over to friends house for some caso. We kept going outside to see if it is raining. The streets are empty. Really wierd. I actually saw an HPD unit.

There is not enough rain at this point to even get underneath the trees wet. On the way over I saw a FEMA convoy headed futher east. There was another communications convoy with a VSAT antenna that looked like it was heading to Terry Hershey Park.

Pretty windy it is almost like a front is blowing in.

So the big thing now is how do you get all the people back into town. There is still no gas in the pumps here in town.

6:45 Houston time

All the reporters are still standing outside looking for a story. Still trying to find an angle to blame Rita on Bush.

6:37 Houston time. I was expecting a bit more chaos at this point. The streets are still dry by my house. There are pine needles down and some limbs, but we get that with the first winter storm. As for predictions since the NWS can't seem to make one. I am saying Rita comes in East of Galveston and then goes between Galveston and Houston. There is a front moving down the east coast a it will squeeze the storm to the west with the high building over Nova Scocia. Rita has flattened out and lost the well defined eye so some high level wind shearing is taking place

Loaded some more batteries in the flashlights, moved the 4 wheeler trailer onto hard ground.

Trying to decide on breaking out the coleman lantern. May fire up the gas lamp on the back porch if the lights go out.

I am going over to my friends to have caso

It's about time to get this over with. Lot's of prep. I went over to dad's and put plywood up on his windows. That was after I got some gas this morning for Hector's car at Sams. There was one little incident there. Some person tried to cut in line. I back up and asked the person to go around and get in line. Some guy came up and yelling at the cutter. I asked that person to go back to his truck and chill out.

Hector wanted to head out and be with his wife. He was pretty sad about leaving his cat, but the cat should have stuck around if he wanted a ride home.

I went for a short bike ride this morning and stopped by some friends. It was windy on the ride home but nice since there were no cars to deal with. A couple of stations had gas and had short lines.

Out on the west side around beltway 8 and I-10 the first bit of rain came through about 3:30. Then it stopped and became sunny. Looks like the bands are starting to come on shore.
So it should become a bit more intersting

Buoy 42001 it is now on the back side of the storm since the wind has shifted. It is/was pretty much right in the path of the storm. The waves got up to 38 feet on it today. Should be some good surf tomorrow at Corpus.
I think I had one too many Dryers real fruit bars. I really like them, but don't want to see them all mushed out when the power goes out.

Have a good evening.

12:09 about 12 hours to go till the wash and spin cycle. I think I over dosed on news today. At this point it is academic. There are a bunch of people with no gas in their cars so it is just time to hunker down in place. Maybe a bike ride in the am.

I have Hector and 1 of 2 cats staying with me tonight. I went was on my way to Dad's to help board up windows at 3 or so and this 77 year old man came and asked the way to San Marcos. Also he was out of gas and his 2 cats were near heat exaustion. So I brought him back to the house. One of the cats was so freaked that it jumped out of the car. Then started to climb into the engine compartment. It meowed really bad when it hit the hot exaust manifold. Then it ran and jumped into the storm sewer.
I pulled the covers and saw it once and have not seen it since. Hector had been on the freeway since 4 am this morning and is asleep now.

My neigbor and I were outside chatting for 45 minutes and only one car went by. There is a eerie quiet over the hood.

Hurricane prep is all those things I put off till tomorrow. A little cleaning here, a bit of picking up there. But then there is the 5 or so gallon baggies of ice in the freezer. This list of things keeps getting longer.

I don't really recall doing any prep for Alicia. The forecasters said Freeport, but fogot about the right hand turn that the storms make when they hit the upper Texas coast. Not sure why they do that but they all seem to. Alicia was not that big of deal in my book. Went to sleep about 11 and woke up around 5. Thought about going to sleep then all of a sudden I was awake. Dad was too. We decided to drive just east of downtown and pick up a generator. I-10 was empty and the wind was blowing from the North. The suburban was rocking a bit so we just got up along the inside wall. We grabbed the generator, if you can grab a 15kw track generator onto a dual axle trailer and then stood behind a building and watched the storm. Not too bad, but the rain did hurt. On the way home the wind was from the South so the eye passed over us at some point.

Afterwords I was going around the city checking tower sites. It was very wierd to have only downtown lit up. I think it never lost power. It did lose lots of windows. They had gravel on tar roofs on the buildings. Gravel makes pretty good window breakers at 60mph.

So the prep continues. Sharpen some chainsaw blades. Fueled everything up a couple of days ago. Boarded a couple of bigger windows. Now the storm track keeps pushing to the east. Cut all the branches closer to the roof.

I noticed the shift in what I was planning today. Stopped with the survival planning and with the rescue thinking. Still have everything that needs charging on the charger. I should have internet access throughout the storm as long as the celluar network stays up.

Rita entering the Gulf and starting to form up