If the impact of Helene has any upside to it, it's that in the face of the threat from Milton, people are not inclined to hang around and "ride it out". The pictures of the last week's devastation are way too fresh.
@Pat_Walrond
This repeats exactly the rhetoric just before Rita.
That was a different kind of disaster and people died on the highways in stop and go traffic.
@Xponent_Rob They didn't get out and off the road in time?
No, the storm turned and hit the Tex/Louisiana border.
There were 2 million people trying to evac Houston for no reason. People died in traffic accidents in places where it wasn't even raining.
People got scared because this was like a few weeks after Katrina. There were so many uninvolved people telling people to evac, it became difficult for the authorities to pass on good info to the people on the roads, many of whom had run out of gas on the highway.
@Pat_Walrond
IIRC, Rita was the biggest evacuation in American history.
During Rita, I did something that could be considered an alternative.
I parked in a parking garage in downtown Houston. If I ever am faced with such a storm again I will do it again and treat it like a big campout.
It's a lot safer than the roads my family were stuck on.
At the time of Rita, I lived across the road from the Johnson Space Center, just a few hundred feet from Clear Lake, which means I was in a bad spot for storm surge.
@Xponent_Rob @Pat_Walrond @ellesu
That is a great idea. Interstate cooperation and traffic technology has also greatly improved since then.
@Xponent_Rob My first thought was to wonder how safe that would be if there were flooding, but then I realised I was thinking very much in a Barbadian frame of reference -- we have only a couple of multi-level car parks. I assume you're talking about your gazillion-level car parks?@Bliss @ellesu
Usually 5 or 6 floors.
A good one for a storm would be at least 4 floors above ground level and wide enough that parking in the center of the garage keeps you 50 feet away from the perimeter.
@Xponent_Rob Well that certainly makes sense
@Bliss @ellesu
@Bliss @Xponent_Rob @Pat_Walrond @ellesu holy crap !! That was bad !!
@Pat_Walrond An estimated 2.5 – 3.7 million people fled prior to Rita's landfall,[46][47] making it the largest evacuation in United States' history.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Rita