Hurricane Rita T-1days

5:55pm
Just went out to look at the sky after watching the TV broadcast for hours. It seems that Hurricane Rita will not put her eyes on us... directly, and she is now a CAT 3 hurricane. I just want to see it for myself.
TV don't lie, the dark cloud is moving very fast, it rains a little and the wind is probably not more than 30 miles right now.
Portrait of Hurricane Rita at 5:00pm.
Looked for wall clouds (habit since my Oklahoma prairie days) but detect non. So the possibility of funnel cloud is reduced.
Oh! yes, we have a lot of birds today. Lots of them, especially grakles (not common in my neighbourhood) I guess they must have watch TV as well (that my area is now safe-er).
Well, the worst is yet to come... we'll see. The hurricane is still taking her time to landfall... things will change in a matter of hours...

1:36pm
Looks like Hurricane Rita might go down to a CAT 3 when it landfall a few hours from now. That's really good news if it sustance that way.
The wind is picking up a little more but nothing that will get the hair behind your back stand yet.

This is the portrait of Hurricane Rita at the moment.

10:53am
Hurricane Rita is slowly approaching. The sky is still quite bright but the cloud is slowly thicken. The wind is picking up and the formation of the cloud is slowly showing the danger that lies ahead.

The cloud formation as seen in the picture, this picture is taken facing North East, the direction of Miss Rita. This was taken early this morning, metering is set to the sky.
Finally finished boarding up the house with what ever I can find (I only manage boarding up 3 windows, while taped the rest). I only covered larger windows facing the North East side, I hope the Hurricane doesn't do the looping motion and come back with a strange direction (as some of the scenarios indicated).

7:07am
First arrest occured to the surfer that almost drown (cause they found his surfboard first, unskilled and stupid if you ask me). He was saved and handcuffed when he tried to go back to the sea. I wanted to say something else about this but, no... I changed my mind.

6:57am
Really bad news. A evacuation bus just blew up at I-45 North highway. Multiple fatalities had been reported.
It's a bus with carrying elderly citizen who rely on oxygen tank, and the oxygen tank exploded.

6:02am
It's here. The rain will starts pouring in vacinity around Houston today, in a few hours (about 5 hours).
The city advised Houstonian who still plans to evacuate to bunker down, because there's not enough time anymore. No gas and traffic problems will expose the stranded motorist.
The sea level is now level with the Galveston's sea wall, at 17 feet.
Hurricane Rita is now a CAT 4 hurricane. As bad as it is, it is actually "feels" a little better from the CAT 5 storm that it was presented to us.

At the home front. Can't sleep very well.
The yard is now cleaned. I have collapsed the basketball hoops, and brought in all the yard equipments. Taped some windows with the duck tapes that I have left.
Today, I will start working on creating a mattress fortress in the middle of the house.

The latest story says that we will still get a 75 mph or above wind even though the hurricane path had changed a little, but it's still shifting. The good news is that Houston will be at the "safe side" and thus, tornado should be "minimal".

Wishes:
Family safe.
Jaguar Shark safe.
Electricity not gone too long.
Peace instead of chaos.
Tennis with KS on Sunday, or chess with Dave on Sunday... that would means that everything is peachy and fine... :)