Houston Chronicle:
By early this morning many of the primary evacuation routes from Hurricane Rita had turned into parking lots.
One motorist reported sitting in traffic for nearly an hour on the Sam Houston Tollway heading into Pasadena. Interstate 45 slows to a craw beginining just inside the tollway, through downtown and past Interstate 610 on the north side. Even the Hardy Toll Road, usually a relief valve from I-45 was just creeping along, according to Transtar reports.
Hundreds of thousands of Houston-area residents, their minds filled with images of nature's furious assault on Louisiana and Mississippi, joined a stop-and-go exodus from their low-lying homes Rita zeroed in on the Texas coast with Category 5 winds of 175 mph.
"I've gone about two miles in 45 minutes" said the motorist on the Sam Houston Tollway. "I see the lights of the refineries here before dawn and then as far as the eye cane see, red brakelights. Many of the cars have boats, kids sleeping in backseats and boxes attached to their roofs and the interior packed with belongings."
As of The National Hurricane Center Wednesday night warned that the storm, with low air pressure of 898 millibars, had become the third-most-intense Atlantic basin hurricane on record. Normal sea-level pressure averages 1012 millibars.
As of early today, the projected path of the storm began to shift northward over Galveston Bay, but it remains to early to tell where it will land early Saturday. The entire Texas Gulf Coast remains vulnerable.
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The Houston Real-Time Traffic Map shows several delays, and has no data on many oytbound routes as of 7 a.m.
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