Posted: 26 September 2005 at 3:03pm | IP Logged

Being in northwest Houston, we were watching the hurricane's arrival path very carefully. On Wednesday, most signs pointed to us being on the dirty side and a Cat 4 at landfall. There was one model that took Rita into the western corner of Louisianna. By Thursday, Rita was moving further east and on a collision course for Galveston and Houston. By Friday we were cautiously optimistic that Rita was going to pass by us and into Louisianna. However, there were still warnings that hurricanes can be unpredicatable and there was a possibility that Rita could shift west and head straight for us. While not a good thing for LA, a big relief for us.

We continued to prepare for a major power outage and some windows to be broken. We stayed awake until 4am to make sure that Rita made landfall and wasn't going to do a u-turn and head back to us. With Rita over 300 miles away, we still had winds up to 60mph, but very little rain. Our power flicked on and off briefly four times and our Directv signal remained throughout the storm.

As we watched on KPRC, we realized that had it been a direct hit, we probably wouldn't have much of a house left. Rita was still swinging category 3 winds hours before the eye made landfall. With the storm around 170 miles out from the center, those winds would have hit Houston with no problem.