Rita looks like it is on its way

[wwinfl91]

Well it looks like another hurricane is heading towards Key West. Rita is currently still a tropical storm but according to various weather reports it will be either a cat 1 or cat 2 hurricane when it passes south of Key West tomorrow night.

 

Evacuations orders are in effect for the whole of the lower keys. Most of the web cams in Key West do not seem to be working already which is a little strange considering the storm isn't there yet.

 

Hopefully it will stay far enough south of Key West so that the city avoids any real damage again. But as Katrina made very clear storm surge can be a killer and right not they are predicting a 6 to 9 foot storm surge in the Keys. Given how low Key West is this could be a real problem there.

 

Hope this doesn't happen but figured this board needed to have a post about it.

[shan&steve]

I am sailing on the Rhapsody next Sunday (hopefully). Our first stop was scheduled to be Key West, now it looks like that may not happen. If it doesn't I will be very disappointed to miss it. It was probably the port I was looking forward to the most. Oh well, I told my husband today that if we don't get to go, we will just have to schedule a regular vacation for there....AFTER hurricane season!!:p

[wwinfl91]

We have also been planning on doing a land trip there to make the trip out to the Dry Tortugas and see Fort Jefferson (you can't actually get out there during a cruise stop not enough time). But everytime we start making plans to go another hurricane or tropical storm comes up and we cancel again. Key West is very seasonal as far as prices go and if we don't make it this month or next we probably won't be willing to pay high season prices and go so we will need to wait another season. We should have gone earlier but we chickened out.

 

Hopefully it won't hit it too hard but right now it doesn't look good if the storm really starts gaining strength. The path would take it just south of Key West which would put Key West in the Northeast quandrant where the strongest winds and highest strong surge are.

 

I guess all we can do is keep our fingers crossed and hope everyone took the evacuation seriously.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[TrentS]

Key West appears to have come through with relatively minor damage. The Keys reopen to residents tomorrow (Wednesday), and reopen to tourists on Friday.