NOW: Hurricane Rita

It appears it's back, or maybe it never did go down. I was just going off what the blog said, and what looked like a couple missing volume scans
 
Originally posted by Dan Dawson
It appears it's back, or maybe it never did go down. I was just going off what the blog said, and what looked like a couple missing volume scans

It just updated again, might have gone down for a few but seems to be okay now.
 
Originally posted by Jay Cazel+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jay Cazel)</div>
<!--QuoteBegin-Dan Dawson
It appears it's back, or maybe it never did go down. I was just going off what the blog said, and what looked like a couple missing volume scans

It just updated again, might have gone down for a few but seems to be okay now.[/b]

They are on generator now
 
Looks like Rita is still pretty leveled off intensity wise and effects are now being felt. Im concerned about flooding over the next several days as the GFS and GFDL indicate tons of precipitation to fall into TX/LA. HPC indicates 11 inches in TX/LA which is probably locally higher in SW LA. With almost ten inches expected over nearly the same area as steering currents collapse. With 99% of the Gulf refining/oil operations shut-down it's pretty reasonable to expect some increase in prices or even some shortages well into next week around the affected regions. It does appear that Galveston and Houston will be spared a catastrophic hit and instead be 30-40mi away from the western eye-wall winds and more extreme storm surge.

18z Model data favors Port Arthur with NOGAPS, SHIP, GFDI and AVNI.
The ETAI and GFNI take Rita over or very close to Galveston-Houston but their forecast tracks were about 10 degrees off in the last four hours.

I don't think the surge will be high enough to overcome the Galveston barrier but Port Arthur looks like it's a good candidate for being
 
The deep convection is making an attempt at wrapping completely around the center as of 0045z. I personally would be shocked if this came ashore as a category two; I'm thinking somewhere on the order of 130-135mph landfall intensity.



EDIT: Brandon, I think you may be dead-on with your landfall location -- if this happens, the FCMP towers will be in the western eyewall.
 
I love the forecast for Jefferson County, TX:

Tonight...Occasional showers and isolated thunderstorms. Hurricane force winds. Locally heavy rainfall possible. Lows in the mid 70s. Northeast winds 55 to 75 mph with gusts to around 90 mph increasing to 70 to 100 mph with gusts to around 120 mph after midnight.

 
Hey,

Here in The Woodlands, just north of Houston. Getting gusts of around 35-40 mph.

Hoping we'll be spared.
 
Wow...that site says the NWS calls for 20 ft. storm surge at BEAUMONT and Orange, and 10 feet in downtown Lake Charles.

There's LOTS of petrochemicals there, folks...you can see lots of refinery towers and flares in both Beaumont and Lake Charles, and in Port Arthur they say they're as far as the eye can see. A couple of refineries have their biggest operations in America right there, a Port Arthur native and announcer on a Tulsa AM station said today.
 
The Inner and outer Eyewall don't look that great. It looks like dry air is starting to entrain into Rita and shear is also having some effect. The eyewall appears to be almost 50% open and is very ragged and even slightly obsecured. Winds are starting to increase with some buoys reporting Hurricane force gusts.
 
It sounds like the 23z VORTEX message will be the last one for (EDIT) RITA. The current recon trip just ended, and I heard a met on TV say he knew there would not be another one due to proximity to land. Latest IR shows very cold cloud tops wrapping around the eye. However, as has been the case since the prolonger ERC ended this morning, the eye has not stabilized. Since this morning, it looks like there have been a couple more attemps at ERCs, as there were 3 concentric eyewalls around Rita most of the day. Latest radar from Lake Charles indicates that the inner eyewall may be falling apart. If this is indeed the case, there are two possibilities I see... First, the outter eyewall will contract and we will see slight strengthening. The second possibility is that there will not be enough time for the outer eyewall to contract, and the storm will make landfall with a very large eye. If this happens, I don't think they'll see mid-range Cat 3 winds given the lack of strong reflectivity currently in the outer eyewall. If there is enough time to organize a bit more, we could see high-end cat 3 winds I believe. Who knows... perhaps the lack of reflectivity in the inner eyewall is just temporary and not indicative of inner eyewall degradation as expected in an ERC.
 
I don't think a real ERC has been a viable part of this storm for over 12 hours, maybe more. The storm has been ingesting drier air, is encountering friction of land masses, is being hit by shear and is no longer venting at an acceptable rate -- to name a few things. It's over. Thank God.

Mike
 
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