I hate to say it, but cattle trains as a means of evacuation start to sound good.

Good luck - I have a friend just north of Houston who’s riding it out. Crazy weather!

My friend Cajun noted that the traffic lights in his community were still blinking their normal pattern to optimize ordinary traffic, which severely impeded evacuation traffic. 

Sulphur, Louisiana is NOT a big community, but when I left the office an hour ago and hit the first north-south artery out of the city, traffic was at a standstill. One big reason was traffic control. Traffic lights were faithfully changing in acccordance with the patterns established to optimize normal flows. Seems to me that this is the time to change things up. I wonder how programmable those controllers are. There should be an “evacuation mode� that can be enabled to optimize flows in one specific direction.

His latest posts are quite interesting as he is right in the path.  I believe his most recent post is entitled “Tough-talking Cajun hauls butt outta there”

My inlaws had to head west to get out of Sulphur.  They got stuck in Starks until they followed some locals down backroads and got out of the jam.  Took them about 12 hours to get to north Dallas.  They left at about 4 pm Thursday, got here at just after 4 am this morning.

The northeast quadrant is aimed directly at our immediate family.  They’d ride out anything under a 3, but all of them left when Rita shifted.  Or at least all of them that I could get in touch with.  I have no idea where my mom is at - cell network is busy.  Last I talked to her, Wed night, before the storm shifted, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

I don’t know if anyone on here is still interested in Rita, but I’ve been looking for info on the area between Beaumont and Lake Charles along I-10.  Our immediate family all lives there.  Everyone evac’d, but we’re trying to find out what’s happened. 

The Beaumont Enterprise ( http://www.southeasttexaslive.com ) has the best SE Texas info I’ve found so far.  I haven’t found jack shit for southwest La coverage yet.  All I’ve heard is that it may be a month before power is fully restored.  My inlaws in Sulphur (inside the city) went without power for over a week during the ice storm in the late nineties, so they may be with us for a while.

In Orangefield, TX, I’ve heard FM 1442 is closed, and there’s an oil derrick down on Hwy 105.  Pretty much the only north routes into the area.

The tornado that CNN just reported in Belzoni, MS - the wife has a lot of extended family there.  Her parents who are staying with us were trying to go there first.  They lucked out in avoiding the storm totally. 

ANNNDD… time for some venting. 
1. News channels: Stop showing New Orleans video while you’re talking about Lake Charles. 
2. Houston/Galveston avoided the bullet.  We’re tired of hearing about them.  Stop whining about when you can go back.  I’ll sum it up for you: power’s out to a lot of the area, the forecast temp is 99 with a heat index of 105.  Stay where you are until you are sure your house has power.  You’ll be back LONG before many others.  If you MUST complain, go tell it to the New Orleans evacuees.  They’ll set your fucking priorities straight.
3.  CNN’s douchebag weatherman.  Stop standing directly in front of the hurricane on the fucking map.  We don’t want to see YOU and your daddy’s not a glassmaker.

CNN is the Weather Channel’s bitch.  CNN: We think there’s a fire on 19 & 20th streets in Galveston.  I’m not sure if that’s on the shore or not.  Flip to Weather Chan: video of the fire.  TWC had better coverage than CNN. 

Read today in the Dallas news that if Rita had hit DFW instead of veering off east, downtown Dallas could have been flooded by the Trinity river.  The article talked about how it could happen with just heavy rains, due to the increased amount of building done in the past decades in the area.

Man, I gotta go get some homework done.  This weekend has been too damn distracting.