Memories of Hurricane Rita in September 2005 are still fresh in our minds.
A few good downpours have drenched us in the uppermost Texas coast today as Tropical Flash-in-the-Pan Erin moved through southern parts of the state. The Houston Chronicle reports one person was killed in a supermarket in that city today when the roof caved in from rains associated with the tropical storm. That should serve to remind us that tropical weather systems don’t have to be Katrina to kill you. Hells bells, the weather doesn’t even have to be a tropical system to kill you. Everyday lightning and flash floods can do the job just as well.
Nonetheless, those of us who remember just what Hurricane Rita left us almost two years ago — a one-day national media story at that — are keeping a wary eye on Hurricane Dean as it heads presumably toward the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center’s forecast tools including the “Five-Day Cone” project Dean will appear somewhere north or south of the Yucatan Peninsula. That means they really don’t know where it will hit.
There is nothing to do but wait to see what happens if and when Dean gets within spittin’ distance.