Rita was a late bloomer (staying a tropical storm long after predictions of becoming a hurricane Real Soon Now), but once she got into the Florida straights and out into the Gulf, she heated up in a hurry. She's now a Cat 5, with winds in excess of 165 mph. Look out, Houston.

And this is one of several reasons why I declined to relocate to Houston when they moved Shuttle from Huntington Beach!

Hoping they dodge the bullet and wishing the best for all, especially my friends at JSC.

Our prayers are with the people in Texas.

God bless

They just shifted to contraflow on the highways about 2 hours ago. Traffic is piling up on I-45 trying to come into Dallas. I'd imagine most people are trying to head North but probably not the best direction to head since there is really only one major highway to goes North out of Houston and it turns into a 2 lane highway in several spots.

This is already becoming big economic loss for Texas. Houston is a high technology sector and many businesses will be losing millions of dollars an hour while they are shut down.

Rita is looking noticably less intense on the IR GOES storm floater image. The cloud tops were ascarily intense, uniform circular red yesterday in the false color image, but now it's more orange and it looks like there's some shear building in from the west.

Let's hope it sucks a lot of dry air off Texas (thank your rain deficit, guys) and weakens rapidly before landfall.