http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4261166.stm
Last Updated: Wednesday, 21 September 2005, 17:01 GMT 18:01 UK


E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Houston mayor orders evacuation



Katrina survivors are being uprooted again and moved to Arkansas

Houston Mayor Bill White has called for residents to leave low-lying areas of the city as Hurricane Rita approaches.

Mr White warned that there are not enough government vehicles to evacuate everyone in the affected areas and urged friends and neighbours to help.

The order came as Rita was upgraded to a Category Four storm, the same level as Hurricane Katrina which devastated the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.

New Orleans is again on high alert as this storm could cause yet more floods.

Click here to see Hurricane Rita's predicted path

US President George W Bush has called on people to heed the evacuation orders that have been given, especially in New Orleans, where some residents had been allowed to return home in recent weeks.


We need the citizens, who are the first line of defence in neighbour caring for neighbour in this community, to do your job and to go out and actively look for those who may need assistance



Houston Mayor Bill White



Send us your comments


"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," Mr Bush said.

"We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm. But we've got to be ready for the worst," he added.

Hurricane Rita gained strength as it headed across the Gulf of Mexico after battering the coastline of Cuba and the southern tip of Florida.

It is expected to hit Texas later this week and, with winds now exceeding 130mph (210km/h), tens of thousands of people are evacuating coastal towns in its path.

Troops and supplies are already being brought to the region to deal with the hurricane's aftermath.

Evacuees moved again

The BBC's Alastair Leithead in Miami says state and federal authorities are planning for something as big as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of the Gulf coast last month, and this time they want to be sure they are properly prepared.




New Orleans fears fresh battering


Oil companies have stepped up their evacuation of rigs in the region. Galveston, another Texas city, is being evacuated.

Several thousand Louisiana residents - who found shelter in Texas after their homes were wrecked by Hurricane Katrina - are being uprooted again and moved to Arkansas and Tennessee.

And 500 buses are standing by ready to evacuate people from New Orleans whose protective levees are in a weakened state and could be breached once more by heavy rain.

"The conditions over the central Gulf are much like they were for Katrina," US National Hurricane Center deputy director Ed Rappaport told CNN.


The eye of the storm has yet to make landfall


Earlier, areas of northern Cuba and southern Florida were flooded, power was cut off, and winds damaged buildings and infrastructure.

But forecasters said Rita had taken the best possible course, with the eye of the storm missing land altogether.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush had declared a state of emergency in the state, which allows the state to oversee evacuations and call in the National Guard.

In Cuba, some 58,000 people were evacuated from the northern coast and more than 6,000 in Havana alone, Cuban officials said.

The hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November.
********

Good old dubba he has spent his entire presidency, mostly based at his texas ranch, now as rita approaches texas, bush hightails or goes AWOL back to DC,
lets hope the storm goes by soon, so dubba can get back to what he does best, being a jack ass at his ranch.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4268588.stm
A hurricane by any other name?


By Stephanie Holmes
BBC News website



Tropical cyclones - swirling masses of winds travelling at ferocious speeds - already have split identities.



Sweet by name but not by nature - Hurricane Ophelia



They are known as a typhoons in the western North Pacific region, hurricanes in the western hemisphere and cyclonic storms elsewhere.

But with an unusually large number of hurricanes so far this season, the forecasters' tradition of giving them names beginning with consecutive letters of the alphabet could prove inadequate for the first time ever.

Hurricane Rita is snapping on the heels of her sister, Katrina, and Wilma, the last on the list (after Stan, Tammy and Vince) may be lingering not too far behind.

What happens then?


"If we go beyond Wilma, we'll use the Greek alphabet," said Nanette Lomarda, head of the Tropical Cyclone division at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Hurricane Sigma?

The UN body is responsible for co-ordinating the naming of the severe weather systems.


Each particular cyclone has its identity and its own character, you get to know them



Nanette Lomarda, WMO



New Orleans fears second storm



The WMO says they have never had to name a hurricane after a Greek letter before.

"But the possibility is high. On average in the North Atlantic, Gulf Coast and Caribbean we should have had six named storms, but we are already at number 17," Mrs Lomarda said.

So Hurricane Omicron and Hurricane Sigma remain a distant possibility. But Alpha and Beta are quite likely.

Naming hurricanes makes them as real and memorable as their effects.

Experts say easily recognisable names can even help mitigate a hurricane's potentially deadly effects as residents become aware of an approaching storm.

Christening storms

With up to 80 hurricanes gathering pace throughout the different cyclone seasons each year, forecasters need a way to differentiate between them.


The after-effects of hurricanes can be devastating


Hence each weather system is christened with a name as one might a baby.

"Each particular cyclone has its identity and its own character, you get to know them. Their behaviour is unique," Mrs Lomarda said.


The naming of hurricanes has a suitably stormy history.

Originally hurricanes were identified by their location, but their latitude and longitude did not exactly trip off the tongue.

A 19th Century Australian forecaster, Clement Wragge, is reported to have amused himself by naming them after loathed politicians - describing how they wandered aimlessly and displayed erratic behaviour.

Until the early part of the 20th Century, hurricanes in the Caribbean region were named after the saints' days on which they struck.

Staying alive

Individual names began to be attached in the 1950s, with US meteorologists using initially the phonetic alphabet and then female names.

In the 1970s feminist groups succeeded in changing the nomenclature to alternating male and female names.

RETIRED ATLANTIC STORMS

Alicia - 1983
Betsy - 1965
Donna - 1960
Inez - 1966
Klaus - 1990
Mitch - 1998


Source: NOAA

Names reflect the geography of the storm's birthplace and the sensibilities of the region.

While Kirk, Patty and Sandy may skirt the US, Jal and Bulbul could strike the Bay of Bengal and Saomai or Bebinca might rise up from the South China Sea.

As they move, their names mutate, "There are no boundaries for these systems, as long as they are over water they are alive," Mrs Lomarda said.

Only when a storm has had a major impact is its name removed - or retired - from a revolving six-year list.

It is replaced with another of the same letter - for example Olga replaced Opal in 2001- so that truly memorable hurricanes are never forgotten.


********
Alpha and Beta
sounds nicer, than katrina and rita, awful names,
now hurricane Stan, Tammy, are next in line, followed by hurricane vince.
hurricane vince is the only nice name there, the rest sound like geek, or nerds names.

Man, that has to suck for those New Orleans survivors that were relocated to Houston. The freakin hurricanes are following them wherever they go. I hope they're kept outta California cause they're cursed. All that voodoo of theirs must have backfired or something.

- N