Well, here at the house, we came out pretty good... A few leaves blown off
some of the trees and maybe some small twigs, but that's about it... The
rain came in fairly short bursts and was noticeable when it hit the windows,
but overall, it wasn't that much rain... Hell, I've seen more rain from just
afternoon thundershowers... I walked out in the yard to survey any damage
and the ground was damp, but not soggy... I don't think we even got enough
rain to saturate the soil... There's a chance the system will stay around
for awhile, so maybe we'll get some much needed rain... No shingles blown
off the house either... Power is currently on and as far as I can tell, we
didn't lose it during the night either... All in all, we came out pretty
damn lucky on this one... Looks like our plan to send the Katrina survivers
to Arkansas as bait worked... Rita was originally plotted to come ashore
around Matagorda Bay (west of Houston) and as such we would have been on the
'dirty' side of the storm, but after we sent the Katrina survivers to
Arkansas, it shifted course appropriately and came ashore around Cameron, LA
(south of Lake Charles)... The eastern parts of Houston received greater
winds and rain, so Houston didn't exactly escape unharmed, but it should be
a simple cleanup issue with a few days of no power for some residents...
Galveston is pretty much without power, but that was to be expected... Many
of the people who were evacuating Galveston figured that they wouldn't have
a home to which to return... Since Galveston was also on the 'clean' side of
the storm, they mainly received north winds, so instead of having water
blown from the Gulf over the island, they only had to worry about the water
between it and the mainland causing problems... It's not that deep and far
to the mainland, so it didn't really cause a flooding issue for them... A
few buildings burned down in the historic "Strand" section of Galveston... I
was watching the video of it last night on TV and the fire was impressive...
It was basically blowing sideways with what probably amounted to a firestorm
of embers blowing downwind... Surprisingly, they were actually fighting the
fire in the middle of the storm and managed to supposedly were able to put
it out with only the loss of three buildings...

According to the weather reported at SGR, the worst wind was 30 mph, gusting
to 45 mph and we've received less than a half inch of rain so far... Over at
DWH where my aircraft is at, they had winds of 23 mph gusting to 44 and not
even 0.1 inch of rain so far... These figures are from the hourly reporting
of the NWS NOAA websites:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/obhistory/KSGR.html
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/obhistory/KDWH.html

It's possible that these locations might have had worse winds at them since
these measurements were just snapshots of what was occurring at each hour
data point... One possible concern with respect to DWH is that the hourly
measurements ended at 01:53, so it's possible that they either lost power or
a significant meteorological event occurred that disabled their measurement
instruments... I'm hoping the former and not the latter...

As far as my plane goes, I don't know whether it sustained any damage... If
a lot of people are trying to get back into Houston today, traffic will be
screwed up again, so I'll probably not go check on it for a day or so...

Current reports are that some people are coming back into Houston and there
are long lines at the very few gas stations that are open, but the mood is
quite a bit better than it was during the evacuation... Prior to the storm,
people were stressed about having to get out before the storm hit and now,
they're not under a time deadline, so they seem to be willing to go with the
flow... Before the storm, the temperature was over 100F in a lot of places
(I remember seeing 103F on my car's thermometer and that was at highway
speeds -- 75-80 mph -- so the heat from the engine would not have been
artificially raising the indicated temperature)... Today, the temperature is
quite a bit cooler (currently 86F at SGR) and the decreased temperature
might also decrease the stress on the people who are returning to the
city...

Originally, it was forecast by CenterPoint Energy that some people in the
area might be without power for as long as 2 weeks... They said that they
would probably be able to restore power to 80% of the residents within 4
days... Now, this brings up a question on whether one should make their home
more self-sufficient from an electrical standpoint... If one was to decide
to add a generator to their house, it seems that the generator should be
housed in a building that would be relatively immune from damage by winds or
minor flooding... Maybe some of our Florida group members would have better
experience with this... Do you build an enclosure for your generator out of
concrete-filled cinder blocks and elevate it somewhat?  Do you keep enough
fuel onhand to always be able to run your generator for however many weeks
that you think you may be without power?  It seems that the diesel
generators are more efficient, but I've seen some generators that can run on
natural gas, LPG, and gasoline... I've heard that often natural gas remains
available even after a hurricane and as we've seen from some of the fires
bubbling up in New Orleans after Katrina, it might still be available even
after massive devastation... Think kind of makes me believe that having a
system that consisted of using natural gas for the primary generator fuel
with a 300 gallon LPG backup and a gasoline secondary backup could be
adviseable for certain hurricane prone areas like Florida... Although I
would like this sort of setup for my use, it seems like it might be a bit
overkill unless one was to be able to use it more often... It would kind of
suck to be sitting there hoping for a hurricane just so you could justify
your preparedness expendatures... <grin>