RITA - the monster is coming...

[mikim]

Vern - my office is in Dickinson - it's just fine.
When I left my house in Angleton on Wed a.m. - Rita was pointed directly at Freeport as a cat 5 and I figgered the house was a total loss - it was built before hurricane clips. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif When I returned Sat a.m. - all was OK and the rain gauge had 1/2" in it. I feel for the folks in east Tx that got hit - but looking at the bigger picture - when Rita moved east and weakened the way she did - we got lucky. If the eye had come ashore --as a cat 5 -- anywhere from just south of Houston to Galveston - such that the dirty side would impact from Houston to Galveston Bay east - the damage woulda been as bad or worse than Katrina.
I don't want to make anyone think I don't feel for the folks that did get it - I do - It's just that what I was seeing as late as Thur was a catastrophic event in highly populated areas.
The wife and I have been talking all weekend and I think we will sweat out one more season - to give me time to get the house ready - then we're selling. I never wanted to live in the gulf basin - I followed the job market - now that I'm eligible - I want out.

 

[BB_TX]

Mike - It seems that almost invariably, the actual hurricane track on the gulf coast is always east of the forecasted track, even down to the last few hours before landfall. Do the models do that by design? Is there an intentional effort to err on the west side? Or is that just the nature of the beast?

 

[mikim]

There certainly is a trend there isn't there? .... The models come up with their predictions according to what past storms have done with similar conditions. They come from a limited number of super computers.. I believe that as computing power gets better and the data fed into them becomes better ... the forecast track has just got to get better. Keep in mind that they are averaging data that has been put in since .... when???..... and just how good was the data that got entered prior to having all these top notch computers. It was just about 40 years ago that a computer required an entire floor of a building with major air conditioning .... and it had the same computing power as a 10 year old desktop. What I'm saying is .... the models are predicated on limited accurate data right now. Old data was (is) flawed ... but ya work with what ya got. (remember - garbage in = garbage out) I'm sure it'll get better ...... as soon as I retire - it'll be much better. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[texbaylea]

Mike - I know what you are feeling. When I finally retired from aerospace jobs, I couldn't wait to get out of Dickinson. Had to find a buyer first but when we did we were gone. Our current house is not as grand as the one we had in Dickinson but we are making do. Hope to start some adddition this fall to give us some more kitchen space then add a new bedroom, bath and living room. Wish I was as strong as I once was but will manage.

Thanks for the info on Dickinson, it was a nice town to raise our son in.

Vernon

 

[texbaylea]

Mike - You have brought up what 99%, well maybe 98% of the people of this country don't or won't recognize. You can't model what you don't have data for. When with NASA I started a computerized man model to assist in radiation dose analysis for the astronauts, now 25 years later it has become a reliable tool for the medical physicists.

All those nuts that say that we don't need to use animals in research - just do it with computers. How in the H*** can you do that with the research data?

Vernon

 

[BoneheadNW]

Mike-

Where would you move?

Bonehead

 

[mikim]

Somewhere temporary initially - even thinking of an RV -- then to Paige for hopefully 40 years or the rest of my life, whichever comes first. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[jinman]

Anybody hear from Eddie Walker? Reckon he has power? I heard about 75,000 folks were still without power. The last I heard from Eddie, he was hunkerin' down for the storm. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[BB_TX]

Paige - Had to look that one up. Born and raised native Texan and I had never heard of Paige. But I like the area.

 

[mikim]

it's actually 4 miles south of Paige and 1 mile north of the Gotier Trace. The trace was blazed by James Gosher as a land route from Austin's HQ in San Felipe, on the Brazos, to the new capitol site on the Colorado. You'll find his name in the history books - spelled in different ways (as above) - he was illiterate and didn't know how to spell his own name so it got spelled any ol' which way. The trace is now highway in a lot of places - but near me there is a stretch of it that hasn't been improved since he laid it out.