Ultimate Chase Photography Blog

Only days after Hurricane Ike devastated parts of the Texas and Louisiana coastline we are remembering another Hurricane that also made landfall at night almost exactly 3 years ago....Hurricane Rita is the only Hurricane I've documented in parts of Texas and I tried my best to make Hurricane Ike the second. I have had a run of bad luck with the airlines this month getting to the states in time for a hurricane chase. I had reservations to document Hurricane Gustav and after the tickets were paid for Hurricane Gustav's forward speed sped up to a rate that made the timing of my flight too late to get to Louisiana in time. I paid almost $2000 for the flight and lost it all. These airlines have no heart and would not give me a credit or anything. Anyway, I'm still in South America and did some shooting in Brazil last week and next will be going to Patagonia to document the melting glaciers. I'm going to try to cover a hurricane this year if there are any more which I’m sure there will be. I will be ready for anything that forms in late Sept/Oct and will post my chase account with photos. I recently signed with National Geographic, Corbis and Getty Images and my new assignment in South America has been wonderful. I even had a chance to finally build my new website that has ALL the still photos i have shot in my career so far. This site will always be updated and the latest photos will be in the "New Photos" section. Take a look at the new site i took all winter to design at www.ExtremeNature.com

Below is my chase account and details from the Hurricane Rita chase 3 years ago....



The arrow points to our location during Hurricane Rita.

The 2005 Hurricane season was an exhausting and tragic season to cover. I documented 8 different Hurricane landfalls including the landfall of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi coastline. After witnessing the historic 28 foot storm surge event on the Mississippi coast I looked at documenting Hurricanes very differently. Now all hurricane chases were either "Pre-Katrina" or "Post Katrina". How was I going to chase any more Hurricanes after the toll Katrina took on me physically and emotionally? I was wishing for it all to stop. Then there was Rita! Once again the Florida Keys were affected as yet another Hurricane skirted by on its way into the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Rita was the first "Post Katrina" Hurricane I covered and once again we had a Category 5 Hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Is this really happening? I kept asking myself this every time a new advisory would come out saying Rita is continuing to strengthen. I had just covered Hurricane Rita's storm surge effects on the Florida Keys and now Rita is a monster Cat-5 and heading for the gulf coast!.

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Below is the full chase account from Hurricane Rita that I simply copied and pasted off my website:

Landfall # 01: Key West and the Florida Keys.....
I documented Hurricane Rita's storm surge effects in the lower Florida Keys. Rita did not make a direct strike on the Keys, but came close enough to cause significant storm surge and winds up to 100mph. The surge came completely over US-1 in a few locations and covered the road with sand, rocks, seaweed, and other debris. The Keys suffered some damage, but overall was very lucky. If Hurricane Rita would have tracked just 30 miles further to the north and started the rapid intensification just 48 hours earlier, it could have nailed the keys as a Cat-5 Hurricane. Hurricane Rita became a dangerous Category 5 Hurricane with an astonishing barometric pressure of 897mb just hours after passing the Florida Keys. If the timing was a little different the Florida Keys could have suffered Catastrophic damage !!

Landfall # 02: Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Port Arthur, TX......
I flew into DFW airport around 9:00pm only to find very limited supplies. The gas was already scarce and spare gas canisters were nowhere to be found. I stocked up on enough food and water for 10 days and headed down to the Gulf Coast. I was severely crunched for time because I was scheduled to be on NBC's Today Show with Matt Lauer at 5:45am and all the main roads to the gulf coast were reversed to have all north bound traffic. This meant I had to take all back roads the entire way down to the coast and this took FOREVER. On my drive down to the coast I saw many vehicles pulled over on the side of the road out of gas, overheated, and just simply broke down. Many families were sleeping on the side of the road in the grass because the traffic was so bad that they were stuck. Most gas stations were out of gas. WHERE is the governments evacuation plan? WHAT is the evacuation plan? DO we have an evacuation plan for major cities? NO !! If a plan was in place the first priority when evacuating thousands of people would have been to keep the gas stations stocked with gas !

I arrive at Galveston Island in time for the Today Show interview and to start surveying the area for locations to use to document Hurricane Rita. As the day progresses my target area changes to further up the coastline. I decided to team up with friend Brad Riley in Beaumont, TX and use his hotel as the new base location. We went down to Port Arthur to survey the area and did not trust being there for a night landfall. If the levy was breached the water would've poured in fast and instantly this would have become a very dangerous situation. I wasn't convinced that Port Arthur was the best place to be to get the max winds anyway. After analyzing the data more, Brad and I decided to head east. We went to an area called Westlake, LA. It was located just west of Lake Charles and we found a parking garage with plenty of lights on because of the backup generator. The most valuable item when documenting night land-falling Hurricanes is finding some kind of lighting. We shot video for several hours in the eastern eyewall and decided to document the eye of Hurricane Rita next !!

IN THE EYE......Brad and I decided to document Hurricane Rita's eye by heading west out of the eastern eyewall into the eye. We were in a solid rugged Hummer and felt comfortable driving in these conditions because it was interstate roads the entire way into the eye (Interstate 10). This eye experience is my top of all time. We recorded a barometric pressure of 940mb ( My Personal Lowest ). My previous record was 942mb in Hurricane Charley and just when I thought that was going to be the highlight of the eye experience, BAM !!! A bird dives right into my windshield and it's wing gets stuck under the windshield wiper and keeps moving back and forth as the wipers wipe. It startled both of us ! We didn't see it coming; the bird just dove right out of the sky and straight down into the windshield. During the next 20 minutes while driving in the eye about 20 more birds repeated this scenario and died. There were also a lot of birds that were already dead on the road and they were not run over, they either dove into someone else's windshield or just simply dropped out of the sky. I am going with the latter part because there was no one else on the roads during the eye experience. It felt like we were in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds". While driving in the eye we saw hundreds of these exhausted birds that must have been trapped in the eye for days and maybe even since Florida. Birds get trapped in the center of a developing system and literally get locked inside as the system develops into a organized hurricane with a well defined eye. The birds can't fly out because the eyewall surrounding the eye has wind speeds that would kill a bird instantly and the birds can't fly up and out of the Hurricane, this would be too high for the bird and the bird would die, so they are literally trapped! These erratic birds seemed possessed !

Video of the drive on I-10 with the diving birds while in Rita's Eye

We arrive back to the hotel in Beaumont at daybreak and the wind is still blowing in the 60mph-70mph range, but decided to get a few hours sleep at the hotel before we go back out and document the damage. We head back out around 12noon to find severe damage in the area the eyewall passed through. We documented the storm surge that came into Port Arthur by catching a ride on a canoe with some of the locals. The water wasn't super deep, but high enough to get into peoples homes and cause lots of damage. After many days of very little sleep we had become wore out and decided to head back north. We soon got back to areas with power and gas in Dallas and called it a chase !

Videos shot related to Hurricane Rita:
Windows Media Player is required to view videos below:

Note: During the "Bird" encounter while driving in Rita's eye when I am narrating I promise you I am not drunk, LOL! I hate the sound of my voice when I have not slept in 60+ hours. I almost sound like I am sleep talking. I was not going to include the narration but then thought I should because it is part of chasing and this is a great example of how exhausting documenting Hurricanes can be.

Video of the drive on I-10 with the diving birds while in Rita's Eye
Video complation of the Florida Keys and Lousianns during Hurricane Rita
Video from a canoe documenting the flooding in Texas


Click here to view full chase report with all photos from Hurricane Rita


Mike Theiss
UltimateChase.com
EyeInTheTropics.com
www.ExtremeNature.com