Hurricane Dean Costing Millions in Texas

As some of my readers know, I have been keeping up with the status of Hurricane Dean in the event of a potential landfall in South Texas, as a possible hurricane chasing opportunity. It’s been clear to me for at least a couple of days now that Dean is posing no threat to the Texas coast, and will be heading in to mainland Mexico. Even a layperson to weather can see that for themselves just by reading and looking at the graphics on the Hurricane Prediction Center website.

For several days now I have been monitoring the local news and ham radio discussion lists about the preparations going on for possible evacuees coming to Lubbock. Similar preparations are going on all over the state. Earlier on, this was a prudent move to start preparations to be sure, as it did appear there was at least a 50/50 chance of a strike in south Texas. However, as the forecast track and model data has come closer to the event, it has become more and more clear that Dean will NOT hit Texas at all.

Now, you would think once the forecast track of the storm was becoming more evident, preparations that had begun would start to stand down. The reality is, just today President Bush declared an Emergency in Texas and ordered FEMA to move.

FEMA Administrator Paulison has ordered mission assignments completed to ensure critical resources and operations as needed from other federal agencies are brought to bear in support of Texas. FEMA has made 26 mission assignments to other federal agencies and American Red Cross for support of Tropical Storm Erin and Hurricane Dean.

What a tremendous waste of people time, money, energy and resources! I could understand had this been done several days ago, but as I said, it’s been pretty clear for at least a couple of days that Dean was not going to pose a threat to Texas. That action was taken TODAY, the same day the graphic above comes from. The millions of dollars (if not Billions) spent on these operations is nearly impossible to get your head around.

In Texas, South Padre Island has already been declared in a State of Emergency (keep in mind that this is HUNDREDS of miles from where hurricane force winds are currently expected to be). Texas Department of Criminal Justice is already evacuating several prison facilities in the south Texas area. In addition, uniformed personnel with hundreds of buses and aircraft have been moved to and readied for evacuation efforts in an area where much of the population does not have their own transportation.

So why is this happening? One word, Katrina. After the well deserved spanking that the federal government received for their slow response to Hurricane Katrina (or lack thereof in some cases) they have shifted to polar opposites and now are seriously overreacting. The good side to this I suppose is this makes for a good dry run for when the next Hurricane DOES indeed come into the U.S. coast. I guess one could surmise that this was all a big public “show of force” to ease the American public’s thinking that the government is indeed ready to do things right this time.

Could I be wrong and Dean make a last minute turn for Texas? It’s a huge longshot for that to happen, with the high pressure ridge expected to stay north of it and strengthen, it’s highly unlikely. Sadly, while we have all of these resources in place in Texas, I doubt much of them will make their way in to Mexico, which is going to take a tremendous beating TWICE, once on the Yukatan, and again on the central mainland.