Donklephant » Blog Archive » Rita Becomes Category 2 Hurricane

Rita Becomes Category 2 Hurricane

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Environment, In The News

GALVESTON, Texas (CNN) — With Hurricane Rita intensifying as it treks westward through the Gulf of Mexico, the mayor of Galveston declared a state of emergency Tuesday night.

Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas ordered mandatory evacuations of nursing homes and assisted-living facilities starting at 6 a.m. Wednesday.

She also said mandatory evacuations of other parts of the city would begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

So how strong is it?

Rita continued to strengthen as its eye passed through the narrow Straits of Florida between Key West and Cuba and into the warm, open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The hurricane center warned that the Category 2 storm could reach Category 4 status by Wednesday afternoon.

A Category 4 storm has winds from 131 mph to 155 mph (210 kph to 248 kph) and storm surges from 13 feet to 18 feet (4.3 meters to 6 meters), based on the Saffir-Simpson scale that measures hurricane intensity.

So how are the Florida Keys doing?

Gov. Bush said more than 1,600 residents of Monroe County, which includes all the Keys, were in shelters elsewhere in Florida. All three hospitals in the county were evacuated, as well as its nursing homes.

A hurricane warning stretched from just south of Florida City in southeast Florida down to East Cape Sable, around the tip of the peninsula and then north to Chokoloskee. All of the Florida Keys are included in the warning.

Hurricane warnings were still in effect for three Cuban provinces, including Havana. CNN’s Lucia Newman said more than 58,000 Cubans were evacuated from coastal areas.

My prayers and thoughts are with them..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 and is filed under Environment, In The News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Rita Becomes Category 2 Hurricane”

Phil of the future Says:
October 5th, 2006 at 8:15 am
That is so stupid that being how bush is not a racist to hurricane Katrina. Are you going to say something else stupid.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

NOTE TO COMMENTERS:

You must ALWAYS fill in the two word CAPTCHA below to submit a comment. And if this is your first time commenting on Donklephant, it will be held in a moderation queue for approval. Please don't resubmit the same comment a couple times. We'll get around to moderating it soon enough.

Also, sometimes even if you've commented before, it may still get placed in a moderation queue and/or sent to the spam folder. If it's just in moderation queue, it'll be published, but it may be deleted if it lands in the spam folder. My apologies if this happens but there are some keywords that push it into the spam folder.

One last note, we will not tolerate comments that disparage people based on age, sex, handicap, race, color, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry. We reserve the right to delete these comments and ban the people who make them from ever commenting here again.

Thanks for understanding and have a pleasurable commenting experience.