Rita

This is going to be real ugly.

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Rita, the third-most intense storm ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, bore down on the Texas coast as residents moved inland. The Category 5 storm is more powerful than Katrina, which left more than 1,000 dead last month in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

Rita, with winds of 175 mph (280 kph), is ``potentially catastrophic,'' the National Hurricane Center said today in an advisory on its Web site at about 3:45 a.m. Houston time. The storm is forecast to hit land near Galveston, Texas, late tomorrow or early Sept. 24. Rita's center was 515 miles southeast of Galveston, and moving west-northwest near 9 mph.

``You're talking about a catastrophic disaster, with extensive damage,'' Dave Roberts, a meteorologist at the center in Miami, said today in a telephone interview. ``Look at the impacts of Katrina: You're going to get that all over again.''

Link. Godspeed to those in its path.