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Via Houstonblogger Jason Smith (bookmark him), the pictures say it all:

Houston…

New Orleans…

Liberty’s Blog in Galveston:

Our local government has been planning for this for many years. Preparation isn’t going to save much property, but it is going to save lives and prevent some misery.

The Houston Chronicle is launching a blog experiment called Storm Watchers.

Houston lawyer Tom Kirkendall has advice for his neighbors:

As all grizzled veterans of Hurricane Alicia in 1983 know (related Chronicle story is here), this is a serious situation for the Texas Gulf coast and it is time to prepare to batten down the hatches. If you are a relative newcomer to this area and have never been through an intense hurricane before, do not fall into the trap of thinking that the media and others are crying “wolf.” This is a deadly serious storm that has the potential to be every bit as devastating to the Texas Gulf coast as Katrina was to the Louisiana-Mississippi-Alabama Gulf coast. As destructive as Alicia was in 1983 (it’s eye came in on Galveston’s West Beach and tore through the middle of Houston on a track that essentially followed I-45), it was a minimal category 3 storm. In comparison, Rita is shaping up to be a much more powerful storm that is comparable to Hurricane Carla, which was a category 4 (winds of 133-155 mph) storm that caused incredible damage to Houston and the upper Texas Gulf coast on September 11, 1961. Carla had the same minimum barometric pressure as the great 1900 storm that killed over 6,000 people in Galveston.

I hope I have gotten your attention.

Diane at Diane’s Stuff in Baytown, Tx.:

It’s a time like this that makes you sit back and realize what it is you have. Things you take for granted and never give much thought to suddenly become important. What you can feasibly take with you when you get the hell out of the way of what could be a deadly storm. I have certain pieces of glass I couldn’t bear to see lost, a cobalt blue satin glass Tiffin vase, ALL of my amethyst glass, some Hull and Niloak pottery, just too much stuff to list. My husband’s 1936 Martin guitar. All the drawings my oldest son has done. All of my poetry I’ve been meaning for the past few years to get on a disk. Of course there won’t be room for all those things so we just have to protect them as best we can before leaving, which we will do if the storm is going to make landfall close enough to us to be a problem.

PrairiePundit is blogging the traffic situation coming out of Houston.

John Little of Blogs of War is preparing for the storm in Houston and will blog as long as he has a connection.

4pm EDT update. Rita Swirls Into 150-Mph Monster in Gulf

Bush:

“Federal, state, and local governments are coordinating their efforts to get ready,” he said. “Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for New Orleans and Galveston. I urge the citizens to listen carefully to the instructions provided by state and local authorities and follow them. We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we’ve got to be ready for the worst,” he said.

President Bush says he is in close contact with Texas Governor Rick Perry and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco as their states prepare for the storm…

From Florida, reader Lynne S. writes:

We live on a barrier island near Melbourne, Florida (about 1 hour east of Orlando) on the Atlantic Ocean.

Today we received around 4 inches of rain in about 2 hours from a rain band from Hurricane Rita. Streets were flooded as if from a Cat 1 storm. We are far from this hurricane so I really wonder about areas already hard hit (New Orleans and Mississippi/Alabama Coasts) even on the perimeter of this storm. I have never seen torrential rains as today from a storm in the Gulf.

I hope people do take heed with this storm as I did not think we would get this much rain from a storm so far away.

9pm EDT update. She’s a Category 5.

Joe Gandelman’s got a round-up.

Meanwhile, Katrina’s death toll climbs toward 1,000 and is expected to escalate sharply as recovery efforts continue.

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