Take her easy Chris - Woodlands shouldn't get too much damage except from heavy rain/flooding. Keep the family away from windows and enjoy the ride! Let us know how it goes if you can!

Ray

 

Well, all we got was just some wind and high gas prices.

 

Now I feel for the folks down in Beaumont and the surrounding areas that did get a pretty good wallop from Rita but I can't help wondering about all the people in Austin who panicked on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and bought up all the bottled water and groceries in the city and what they are thinking now. That kind of mentality astounds me. It was very apparent that Austin wasn't going to get much in the way of any real weather by early Thursday and yet everyone still panicked all the way through Friday. I was at the grocery store this morning at 8:00am and the shelves were STILL empty on the bread, eggs, batteries, and water aisles. They had every poor stocker still working overtime from the night before trying to get stock back out on the shelves. We didn't even get a single drop of rain and it was just breezy and HOT this afternoon. The main impact here is that it will get over 100 degrees for the next day or two! Well, that and the grocery store companies and the gas stations all just made a TON of money off of everyone!

I guess we should count our blessings but, you know...I was kind of looking forward to a big storm coming through town. We haven't had a hurricane make it up to Austin in like 20 years that I can think of. Of course, I live in a wind-sheltered valley up on the hillside so I really wasn't worried about either wind or flooding personally.

Once again - thoughts and prayers to those that did receive damage. I hope that everyone else is able to make it back to their homes drama-free and find them all in good shape. Way to go Texans! Over 2 million people relocated in ~72 hours and not a single storm related death reported thus far!