Rumbling Rita

She hasn't wrecked as much havoc as Katrina did 3 weeks ago but she's doing her part of damage and destruction. My heart goes out to those along the gulf coast who are being blasted with high winds and from 10 to 20 inches of rain this morning.

We were very lucky here in Arkansas because Katrina's path took her just east of us. We live in eastern Arkansas so we held our breaths as she rampaged her way past us heading north and dropped 4 to 6 inches of rain and knocked down a few trees and power lines about 15 to 20 miles across the Mississippi River from here. We only had a little blowing rain and not a lot of that.

However, we're again holding our breath as Rita meanders her way north since her track could bring us the threat of higher winds and much more rain. Since Rita is moving much slower she will have time to dump much more rain, and rain and wind is what is most dangerous for us since we're about a third of the way through harvest season here in the mid-south. Too much rain and wind will put the cotton and rice crops on the ground making it impossible to harvest.

As for life and limb, we're safe unless Rita breeds a tornado or two when she strolls through here over the next few days. I can't imagine what the folks down south in Lousiana and NW Texas are going through but my prayers are with them as Mother Nature takes another stab at making their lives miserable.


9:08 a.m. 9/24/05. The blue dot on the map is where we live. We have cloud cover and breezy conditions right now. You can see Rita is really busy dumping her rain and blowing to the south of us.