Hurricane RITA

I have no experience with hurricane conditions but the following email I received from a friend, a former classmate, living in Lafayette, Louisiana , USA helped me with some vivid insight as to what one could be ..............!

"Hi All,

We survived. Even though we were not in it's direct path, we were on the eastern sector of the hurricane, the "bad side", here winds are always the strongest.

Our winds picked up to 30-40 mph with gusts of 50 -70 mph around 3pm Friday and then the rains started. Rita was to have hit Texas but it ended up in southwest Louisiana, less than 100 miles west of Lafayette. It was really too late for us to leave, even if we had wanted to. We rode out Lily three years ago but that was a smaller hurricane even if it passed barely 20 miles west of us and it moved fast. Rita took its time.

By 8pm, things were whirling around. Felix went to bed at 10pm. I stayed up watching the tornadic cells popping up ever so often. By midnight, we were getting winds of 50-70mph with gusts close to 100mph. The roof sounded like it would take off and you could hear things hitting around. We lost TV signals around that time but never lost power. All around Lafayette, the radio stations were announcing power outage, downed trees etc. We were lucky we never lost power. The strong winds carried on for about 6 hours and when day broke, we looked out and there were tree limbs everywhere. We did not board up (a few houses in the subdivision did) because it was not supposed to be this strong, But Rita waggled more northwesterly when she made landfall and stalled!!!

Anyway, it is now 10.30am our time - rain is still very heavy and winds are around 20mph with gusts of 40-50 mph. We are expecting this type of weather for the next couple of days until Rita decided where she wants to go. She is still stalling in northwest Louisianan like an unwelcomed guest."

We are thankful that we here are free from such natural disaster.