contraflow

the new favorite word of every broadcaster is "contraflow". I swear I hear it a thousand times a day. All it means is that they reversed the direction of traffic on the eastbound lanes on I-10 and the southbound lanes of I-45 so that traffice could expand to those lanes also. I-45 has been positively demonic; people have spent 30 hours on the freeway and barely getting past Waco. I-10 has been pretty bad too; we did hear from some friends who made it to SA having left at 7am and taking them from between 12-15 hours. The main reason we didnt leave was concern about running out of gas and being stranded like so many have been; the aforementioned friends were driving a Camry and went without AC. That just wouldn't work for us, we need to use our big SUV to accomodate everyone and we cant go 15 hrs without AC given that we have a 3yr old. The contraflow arrangement started at 4pm and initial reports are that it did start to help clear up some of the congesion, but given the storm's continuing NE-drift, we decided to sleep comfortably here tonight and eat a good breakfast.

This morning we slept in; I tried to stay up after praying fajr but was just still wiped out from the hellish drive to Katy the day before. We just woke up and I checked the advisory, and found this from advisory #23:

RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 10 MPH AND THIS MOTION IS
EXPECTED TO CONTINUE DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. ON THIS TRACK...THE
CORE OF RITA WILL MAKE LANDFALL NEAR THE SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA AND
UPPER TEXAS COASTS EARLY SATURDAY.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE DECREASED TO NEAR 135 MPH WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. RITA IS AT THE BORDER OF CATEGORY FOUR AND THREE HURRICANE
ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SLIGHT WEAKENING IS POSSIBLE BEFORE
LANDFALL...BUT RITA IS EXPECTED TO COME ASHORE AS A MAJOR
HURRICANE.

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 85 MILES FROM THE
CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP
TO 205 MILES.

Overall, the storm is weaker and is even further away. The next advisory is at 1pm, so things may change, but for now it looks like here in Katy we won't have hurricane force winds. We will likely have tropical storm force winds (39mph) and significant rain. Its even possible we wont lose water or have an electricity outage longer than a few hours. I'm being optimistic :)

So, contraflow. Our plan is to stay here, not try to reach SA. We are headed to masjid this afternoon, and will simply ride it out from here. As for our house in Dickinson, it will certainly fare worse there than here; I hope that the damage is limited to shingles and food spoilage, but it's likely that there will be some flooding. I hope the preparation we did was enough, but I just cant think about that right now. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it...