Istill remember Hurricane Rita like it was yesterday. A few weeks ago, I shared how Katrina shaped the way we responded to Rita , and why, without Katrina, the massive evacuation we saw in Texas may never have happened. You can read that article here.

Today, I want to look back on Rita with a different lens, how much forecasting and technology have advanced since 2005, and how human behavior under stress has hardly changed at all.

To set the stage: Katrina had just devastated New Orleans. The images of flooded neighborhoods and rooftop rescues were still vivid. Less than a month later, another monster storm, Rita, was in the Gulf. It was even stronger than Katrina, reaching 180 mph winds on September 21, 2005, at the time the most powerful storm ever seen in the Gulf and threatening

See Full Page