Hurricane Patricia Most Powerful Ever; Not A Wind Event For Houston But Flooding Dangers Are Real Enough

Hurricane Patricia, approaching the Pacific coast of Mexico with possible catastrophic results there and the possibility of dangerous winds on the Texas coast and rain events tracking northeast across Texas and other states, is the most powerful weather events ever recorded. Right now, Friday at about 5:00PM Central time, it is a category 5 hurricane, the highest possible on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with current winds of... get this... 190 mph with gusts to 240 mph (that's tornado-like, said one meteorologist) and comparably low barometric pressures measured at the center (by dropped barometers, not aircraft, thank goodness). [UPDATE from Weather Underground: "At 2:30 pm Friday afternoon, October 23, 2015, a NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft measured a central pressure of 879 mb--the lowest pressure ever measured in a hurricane in the Western Hemisphere." Wow.]

That said, I hope you can set your mind at ease about our hazards from this awesome, awful storm: long before it reaches us, for example 1:00AM CT Sunday just prior to its reaching the Mexico-Texas border, winds will probably be 35-40 mph... not even quite tropical storm level. (See map above for forecast extent of tropical storm winds.) That's according to KHOU-TV, which still guests well-known retired meteorologist and acknowledged hurricane expert Dr. Neal Frank and employs several other very respectable younger meteorologists also with tropical expertise and experience.

The rainfall could be a very different matter. Houston's bayous have been successfully engineered over more than 50 years to cope with rains as high as 8" per hour and may... may... be able to withstand as high as 12" per hour in many parts of the city. But the forecast for this event? Between 11" and 15" per hour at its peak. Why such a wide range of possibilities? Well, for one thing, we're talking about tropical rain and South Texas topography here; it's not that easy to forecast in the best of circumstances. For another thing, Houston is a gigantic, spread-out city; people who talk about the "eight-county metropolitan area" are not speaking just metaphorically. Houston is huge. Worse still, its topography is highly diverse... it won't do to forecast one rainfall rate for the whole city because it doesn't work that way.

Of course I'll continue to post as long as we have power, which may be straight through the event... or not. We have food, water, a fairly elevated location within the city, a house that has survived several hurricanes of categories 1 through 3 over the years, a deep and well-engineered bayou near enough to absorb considerable runoff and far enough that we won't flood just by its proximity. As for gasoline, I'm determined neither of us will use any; the city's orders are for citizens NOT to evacuate but to stay home. Those of you who live along coasts know the drill; those of you who live where other kinds of severe storms occur can at least conceive of it.

I'll let you know what we experience. If we lose power and can't use the usual web interface, I can use a cell phone to post a line or two on this blog... ugly but functional. Or maybe Stella will lend me her iPad for a half hour...

Stay safe and dry, my friends. My prayers for the folks in Mexico who are choosing to stay in Patricia's path.

(I have made several post-posting corrections. - SB)

Cool!

... cool enough for Stella, even! This morning, Stella arose, headed (as usual) straight for the thermostat, cranked the temp down to something she considers acceptable (i.e., below 70°F), and... nothing happened. No, the system was not broken; the outside temp was 67°F! After weeks of temperatures of 100+°F, heat indexes a few degrees hotter than the actual temp, we finally got a break.

Not our lawn, but no lovelier...

After doing the absolute minimal wake-up chores ("coffee! coffee!" breathed Stella; "feed me! feed me! feed me! ..." shouted  kitty Esther telepathically), I headed for the one remaining intact patio chair (repeated battering into fences by thunderstorm winds doomed the other, and my bulk finished it off a few days ago) to enjoy a perfect beginning of a Houston Spring day... yes, Spring; that's what it felt like... and to watch as the sun rose, the critters emerged, the oh-so-gentle breeze moved a few leaves, a few inoffensive clouds appeared, the sounds of morning traffic emerged and then subsided, etc. I haven't had a morning like that in a long time!

Of course it won't last. I have (as I used to say in my working days) "lines to code before I sleep, and lines to code before I sleep," and the cool weather will not survive even until noon. But what a treat it was, a respite from the relentless Summer From Hell we've been having. Like a greedy pet cat, I find myself meowing, "More! More! More! ..."

No Black Friday For Us — But It Was A Close Call

Stella and I, as a matter of principle (not to mention a matter of sanity), don't shop on Black Friday. We are fairly relentless in our determination not to do so.

But when I started to back up my bills-paid file to a probably five‑year‑old external laptop‑friendly (i.e., tiny) hard drive, I found that it was unresponsive. Ruh‑roh!

The drive was plugged into an external USB 2.0 hub, on which the power light was cheerfully bright; the drive itself was powered from the USB hub over its one and only cable, and its light was similarly bright. A reboot didn't help. Unplugging/replugging the drive cable from/to the USB hub didn't help. With a big sigh, I contemplated the possibility that I would have to go against my principles and head for Micro Center on Black Friday (shudder).

Suddenly I realized something looked funny about the whole apparatus. Where was the signal cable from the computer to the USB hub, which usually goes into the back of the hub? Sure enough: it was plugged into the big box, but not into the hub! The connector on the hub end is one of those square-shaped USB connectors, good and sturdy, the kind that doesn't simply fall out on its own, and indeed it never has fallen out before. I looked on the floor beneath my feet... sure enough, there was the cable with the connector! Plugging it in restored the external HD, and I could do my backup.

The connector surely had some help unplugging itself. I don't know if the help's name was Esther or Lily; I suspect Lily, but I really can't pin the deed on either of them. Hey, it's the day after Thanksgiving, and they're wonderful cats; there's no way we would deprive them of their treats on a holiday for such a minor offense!