Not to Fear Galveston...

[Iceman24]

If Rita makes landfall as a Category 5 storm, it could produce a storm surge at least as high as 22 feet, which would easily overtop Galveston's 17-foot-high, 10-mile-long seawall, experts say.

Wow I never heard anything about that... 22' high whoa !!
I hope it doesn't get that big or they could be in trouble.

[sling322]

Predictions calling for it to drop possibly to a large cat 3 by landfall....and it keeps shifting East.  Good for Houston area, bad for New Orleans.

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by Iceman24
If Rita makes landfall as a Category 5 storm, it could produce a storm surge at least as high as 22 feet, which would easily overtop Galveston's 17-foot-high, 10-mile-long seawall, experts say.

Wow I never heard anything about that... 22' high whoa !!
I hope it doesn't get that big or they could be in trouble.

Category 5's are rare.  But yes, 22-28 ft surges.  Mankind will never harness that, never.  People just need to move inland, the sooner, the better.

Karaya

[sling322]

Originally posted by BluKitty
Well lessons 'learned' to a point (like we didn't know better before?) ... but NO is a mid-sized CITY ... Galveston is a small TOWN

And Galveston doesn't have a huge population of poor. So apples and oranges.

But yes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

I wonder how Corpus and Rockport, and towns like Victora are doing?
I heard Victora was evacuating, I'd guess  Rockport is?.... Is Corpus?  It's supposed to go more North and East, so maybe they aren't as worried?

Spoken by someone who has never been to Galveston, I assume.  They have evacuated over 316,000 people from Galveston county at this point.  That doesnt include the other coastal counties that surround it or the inland areas south of Houston proper that were under mandatory evacuations.  There is also a large population of elderly and hospital bound folks in Galveston which makes this evacuation that much more tricky.  Calling it a small town is a bit presumptuous of you.  

As far as the news is saying here, most coastal counties have called for evacuations as far south as Matagorda.  Corpus is under a hurricane watch not a hurricane warning and I think there is a tropical storm watch that extends all the way to the Rio Grande river.  

Predictions are putting it in pretty much right over Port Arthur at this point with the possibility of it dropping down to as small as a cat 3 by the time it makes landfall.  They are also watching it very closely as it seems that it may shift even farther to the east.  Another thing they are keeping an eye on is the fact that it has the potential to stall after it makes landfall....only question is where its going to stall.  Different models have it doing different things ranging from stalling just north of Houston and then getting pushed back southwest by a low pressure system moving across TX all the way to stalling out over extreme NE TX and dumping 20-some inches of rain up there.