Talk:Hurricane Rita/Archive 2

WHEN did Rita hit????

Very informative piece except one minor detail. WHEN did the hurricane hit land??? 66.224.68.54, 15:36, 6 October 2005 UTC

It's already mentioned; it made landfall east of Sabine Pass, in Louisiana. Check out "made landfall between Sabine Pass, Texas, and Johnson Bayou, Louisiana, at 02:38 CDT (07:38 UTC) on 24 September 2005 as a Category 3 hurricane" -- NSLE | Talk 06:43, 7 October 2005 (UTC)'

"Currently"

"The warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is currently 1 °F (0.5 °C) above average"

And when was that - ie when was "currently"? Please, don't use "currently", as it dates so fast as to become useless extremely quickly. Use dates and (if known) times. 81.159.56.103 00:41, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the water in all the oceans averaged this year 1 degree F above normal. Water in the Gulf of Mexico this year was in places allegedly up to 5 degrees F above normal. I haven't chased down the details yet. It is considered well-known that sea surface temperature must be above 80 degrees F for hurricanes to thrive, and I saw data buoy results in late September that showed 84.5 degrees. See Loop Current. Simesa 03:20, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

how many people died what waz the coust

119. Only 6 of them were as a result of the actual effects of the hurricane though; the rest were in the evacuation or cleanup or other Rita-related incidents not involving the weather. CrazyC83 05:38, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean saying "0,5°C above average". What is the average temperature in the Gulf of Mexico in this time and what is your source for this information?

Sections that Need Improvement

While this article is one of the best hurricane articles put out by Wikipedia, some sections are still very lacking, notably the Rescue and relief operations section and the Refineries section. If we are to attempt to get this article featured on the main page, those sections will need to be improved. Additionally, many parts of teh article have awkward wording, so any improvements in wording would also be wonderful contributions. - Cuivienen 04:19, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

The 324,300 b/d capacity originally given for Calcasieu refining was grossly inaccurate (don't know where it came from). This is a small refinery. The capacity listed on their website (calcasieurefing.com) is 32,000 b/d. Article has been corrected to give this number. 216.79.54.84 20:34, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

With the season being over, I think many sections of the article need major work. This is no longer a current event and the tense is wrong in many places. Much of this work should probably wait on the TCR, however, or it'll just have to be duplicated. Jdorje 07:40, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Landfall?

Nowhere that I can see does it say what day Rita made landfall. Jdorje 05:26, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, by searching for September 24, you can see it is not mentioned. The storm history should have a whole paragraph on the landfall... Jdorje 17:00, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Landfall is an iffy concept, and not very useful when you are in the path of the storm. The real question is when hurricane force winds reach you, and when the storm surge comes in. Hurricane force winds reached Cameron Parish (bottom left part of Louisiana, adjoining Texas) on September 23rd and lasted well through the 24th and perhaps into the 25th.

Landfall needs to be mentioned in the storm history. Information about how long individual locations suffered hurricane- or major-hurricane-force winds probably deserves to go into the impact section. — jdorje (talk) 18:45, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Evacuation issues

Considering what a debacle the Hurricane Rita evacuation was, perhaps it deserves its' own article? The main article seems messy to me.

Millions of people were stranded on the highways with empty gas tanks in 100-degree heat. That's Houston heat, not Phoenix heat. Deaths weren't limited to that bus that exploded near Dallas. The unusually high number of indirect deaths (113) is in large part due to the horrendous evacuation logistics. Pets died in the extreme heat, many had to abandon their cars where they stalled so they could continue evacuating on foot, and millions of Houstonians returned to their undamaged city with horror stories they will likely never forget. Horror stories that likely will dissuade many from choosing to evacuate again the next time a major storm strikes - and that would be catastrophic.

At any rate, we should at least do an article on hurricane evacuation in general. It might come in handy next season. --SomethingFunny 07:41, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Additional discussion can be found in the archives. Perhaps once the TCR comes out, a rewrite could be done. --SomethingFunny 07:50, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

The main article is very messy. Large portions of it need to be cleaned up. The evacuation debacle should be put into the preparations section, and only if this section becomes too long should it be split off into a daughter article. It should also get a brief mention in the intro. One should not underestimate the insanity of the evacutation - 119 total deaths makes Rita the second-deadliest U.S. hurricane of the last 30 years (since Hurricane Agnes). — jdorje (talk) 06:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The NHC will not officially recognize that 119 though - they only count the 7 direct deaths... CrazyC83 23:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I am glad to see that this section covering the evacuation addressed the gridlock problems in and north of the Golden Triangle (Texas). I would love to find some Texas Gov't article written and include a brief reference here that will reveal the errors made by the authorities (releasing Houston traffic east) and that hopefully, will shed light on this mistake. Let's just hope that doesn't happen again. As a resident of the area I can tell you first hand - that was horrible. JungleCat 17:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Cool Images

These are kind of old, but I just noticed them: [1] A couple of them reveal what the surface of the sea looks like beneath the clouds. The images are copyrighted, but free to use for non-commercial purposes: [2] Good kitty 05:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Emphasis on trivia in lead

I hope some editors will agree to having less ordinal trivia in the first graf. Last night I did an editing pass, moving the geek-centric facts (Rita is the 18th this and 15th that and 12th this and fourth whatever) out of the very first paragraph. This morning it's back, in a revision that also moved the entire storm:

"Rita made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in far southeastern Louisiana."

Which puts Rita in the Pearl River at landfall I guess.

Consider, fellow editors, that the season scorecard is the least interesting/most trivial aspect of these storms to the average person, which is who Wikipedia aims to inform. DavidH 15:51, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Your version of the intro was too long, so I edited it some more. Having the trivia in the first sentence seems to be a standard for hurricanes but I tend to agree with you that it's not important information. Nonetheless the intro should only be three paragraphs long at most, and it needs to be ordered sequentially; your version was 4 paragraphs and seemed to jump from topic to topic. And yes, tye southeast bit was a typo. — jdorje (talk) 17:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Your new version was better but still too long. I made some more edits, though I'm still not entirely happy with the results (though it's better than previous versions) - why don't you give it another run. One thing is we need to get the important links in - tropical cyclone should be linked in the first sentence, and 2005 AHS should probably be in the first paragraph. I know you want to give a summary of the location of damage in the first paragraph of the intro, but in your version this meant you left important information out of later paragraphs (you mentioned Florida and Cuba in the intro, then left them out in the paragraph that said Rita passed through the Straits). In the new version I just summarized the areas of damages as the "Gulf Coast". I removed some of the trivia, but because of the links issue and because it doesn't fit in the second or third paragraphs I returned the rest of it to the beginning. But as I said I'm still not happy with this version, so we should keep playing with it to find something better. — jdorje (talk) 17:34, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Not convinced 3 is the exact limit on paragraphs for the intro, but it's an OK goal. Since there are long sections on each area in impacts, it's fine if we only mention damage areas once in the intro. I didn't have a reference handy on Cuba damage, I did let that slip from the intro.

Agree about links too, should probably be in the first graf.

Glad to see it's being worked on. Tried to remove more of the langugage that sounded unfinished (25 still need to be rescued, etc.) -- DavidH 17:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Minor edit

Hey folks, I added to the evacuations list for Louisiana for Acadia Parish. There was a mandatory evacuation order given at the time for Acadia Parish south of LA-92. Strangely enough, I live in Vermilion Parish, yet I did not receive a mandatory evacyation order, yet the folks 4 miles to the north of me in Acadia Parish received the order. Thankfully, there wasn't any flooding damage for any of us in the area.FlyingCanOpener 02:59, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I have changed the phrase "U.S. Highway 290 northwest to Bryan/College Station." to reflect the fact that U.S Highway 290 leads to Austin, not Bryan/College Station. People on the coast indeed evacuated to the Bryan/College Station area [3] [4] using State Highway 6, which rides with US 290 through the town of Hempstead and turns north, but contraflow was not put in place for Highway 6 approaching Bryan/College Station. 70.252.8.99 00:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Picture on infobox

I decided to change IR images on infoboxes, if you don't agree feel free to revert them. juan andrés 03:08, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

That's cool. If the IR images are to be used I think they should be animations like this [5] Good kitty 02:47, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Class

I find it impossible for Rita to be only a start class. Can't it be upgraded to a B? íslenska hurikein #12_(samtal) 00:26, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I find it impossible for Rita to be a B class without more organization and sourcing. Hurricanehink (talk) 00:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no way this is start-class anymore...bob rulz 20:06, 2 September 2006 (UTC)