Rita disappointment!

With Hurricane Rita not causing as much damage as initially feared, most of the country, especially Texas, should be breathing a collective sigh of relief. But I am sure there are few who are disappointed a little bit, okay, I know there is at least one for sure, that is me!

The amount of preparation that went behind preparing for this hurricane here in Austin was seen to be believed. People, having seen TV reports of Katrina, took Rita seriously, a bit too seriously. Austin was shown to be right in the path of the hurricane and though we are around 200 miles inland from the ocean, people were taking no chances. By this Wednesday most stores had run out of bread, water and other essentials. I went to buy some stuff on Thursday and found that people were filling up their Ford-250s with all the water and food they could find in the store. I found one woman buying loads of toilet paper. I really wondered if this was a part of some special plan to handle the hurricane. I heard that some people bought enough water to last a month. Well, if the hurricane had really stuck us, the one item we would find in abundance and not need a bit would be water, right? ;-)

I on the other hand decided to go very light on preparations for the hurricane, you know we Indians are like that! I live on 3rd floor (Ground-Second-Third in the US as against Ground-First-Second-Third in India), so I figured I would remain dry until the water raised almost 20 feet!

By Friday, it was clear that Austin was well clear of the main path of the hurricane, so the euphoria had come down. But the way events unfolded today left everyone dumbfounded. Not a single drop of rain, for heaven's sake! Not even some dark clouds in the sky. It was just like normal here, temperature at around 100F. I had hoped that it would at least rain a couple of inches, so I could still brag that I was in the hurricane path. (You know, when I was in Austin, there was this huge hurricane, roads filled with water and I could just swim to work instead of walking... something like that). But alas, Austin was left high and dry. What an anti-climax! Looks like we are going to continue to see temperatures in low 100s for a few more days.