After the jolting early morning news that Hurricane Rita was heading directly toward Galveston Bay, the track models have been trending further eastward for most of the day. The current most likely projection is that the storm will make landfall east of Galveston Bay closer to Port Arthur and Beaumont and, if that happens, most of the Houston metro area would at least be spared a direct hit by the most damaging winds around the storm’s eyewall.
However, the key words here are “most likely,” which means that there is a very small percentage difference between the storm making landfall at one spot over another. Stated another way, the chance that the storm could come onshore directly on Galveston Bay is still very likely. The storm is reacting to the movement of three weather systems to its north, and it’s simply impossible at this point to determine with any reasonable degree of certainty where the storm will make landfall between Freeport, Tx to Lafayette, La. My sense is that it will not be until early Friday morning before the experts will really have a good handle on how the storm is finally going to react to the weather systems to its north and thus, where landfall will occur. Moreover, even that very good prediction can be as much as 30-50 miles off if the storm wobbles even slightly while coming onshore. Remember, Katrina wobbled east at almost the last minute and spared New Orleans a direct hit.
Thus, the bottom line is to remain vigilant in following this storm. It looks like the storm will be at least a strong category 3 when the it somes onshore, and a storm of that magnitude — even if it comes onshore well east of Galveston Bay — will cause very dangerous wind and rainfall in the entire Houston metro area.

As you peruse the current projected path of Rita almost directly over Galveston Bay, contemplate Jeff Masters’ latest analysis of the situation:

The latest runs of two key computer models, the GFS and GFDL, now indicate that the trough of low pressure that was expected to pick up Rita and pull her rapidly northward through Texas will not be strong enough to do so. Instead, these models forecast that Rita will make landfall near Galveston, penetrate inland between 50 and 200 miles, then slowly drift southwestward for nearly two days, as a high pressure ridge will build in to her north. Finally, a second trough is forecast to lift Rita out of Texas on Tuesday. If this scenario develops, not only will the coast receive catastrophic damage from the storm surge, but interior Texas, including the Dallas/Fort Worth area, might see a deluge of 15 – 30 inches of rain. A huge portion of Texas would be a disaster area.

This scenario is similar to that of Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 that caused catastrophic flooding throughout the Houston metropolitan area. Moreover, with Allison, Houston did not have to deal with the catastrophic wind damage that is almost certain to result from Rita. Although the new projected path of Rita is not good news for Houston, the prediction that the storm might slow down at landfall and stall over Texas and Louisiana is even worse.