Picture taken from my front door at about
8:30 am on 9/24/2005.
On Wednesday out in the Gulf there was hurricane Rita, the mother of all hurricanes with 175MPH winds. It was projected to make landfall here in 2 days. We spent Thursday and Friday panicking.
We were planning to leave on Thursday morning but when we heard about the Great Evacuation jamming up the freeways, we decided to stay here. Our decision was made easier by the projected path of the storm trending away from Houston and weakening.
The storm made landfall east of Beaumont. The winds here were about in the 50-60MPH range. Because of the mutual blocking of wind by the houses in the neighborhood, I doubt much more than 30-40MPH was felt on the ground.
Because I was busy doing things like buying 3 gallons of gasoline to top off and filling every container in the house with water, I didn't make much progress on the plane.