Houston has a bigger land buffer than I thought ....

[BReb]

I was just looking at Google Earth, which gives you a much better idea of what lies to the south and southwest of Houston than any map. And it's clear that there's a rather large area of relatively sparsely populated (a lot of farmland and scrubland) to the south and southwest of Houston.

I also saw that some of the Houston refineries are pretty high up:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02368.html

Some of the Texas refineries are better protected from water damage than those in Louisiana. For instance, the largest refinery in the country, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Baytown facility outside Houston, is about 20 feet above sea level, far higher than the company's shuttered refinery in Louisiana, a spokesman said.

- end of quote -

Hopefully that will be high enough, considering that some weakening is likely and considering also that the storm surge into the Baytown area won't be a "direct" storm surge from the sea- but rather the result of storm surge piling into Galveston bay. And the city of Galveston itself will presumably absorb and buffer Houston from part of the storm surge.

None of this changes the fact that Rita will be catastrophic if she hits Houston, but I was under the impression that Houston was pretty much on the coastline and that's just not the case- it's the ship channel which will flood the southeast part of the city.

[jwayne]

I was just looking at Google Earth, which gives you a much better idea of what lies to the south and southwest of Houston than any map. And it's clear that there's a rather large area of relatively sparsely populated (a lot of farmland and scrubland) to the south and southwest of Houston.

I also saw that some of the Houston refineries are pretty high up:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02368.html

Some of the Texas refineries are better protected from water damage than those in Louisiana. For instance, the largest refinery in the country, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Baytown facility outside Houston, is about 20 feet above sea level, far higher than the company's shuttered refinery in Louisiana, a spokesman said.

- end of quote -

Hopefully that will be high enough, considering that some weakening is likely and considering also that the storm surge into the Baytown area won't be a "direct" storm surge from the sea- but rather the result of storm surge piling into Galveston bay. And the city of Galveston itself will presumably absorb and buffer Houston from part of the storm surge.

None of this changes the fact that Rita will be catastrophic if she hits Houston, but I was under the impression that Houston was pretty much on the coastline and that's just not the case- it's the ship channel which will flood the southeast part of the city.

storm surge into a bay is worse than direct seafront surge in many instances. It is the case with Galveston/Trinity bay as the surge could be 10 feet higher there than directly at the coast.

[Sean in New Orleans]

With a storm like Rita, storm surge is a concern, but wind damage will take care of anything the storm surge doesn't for over 50 miles or more inland.....