Yes, katrina didn't turn into a monster for about another day after it's initial entrance into the florida straits/GOM. It was moving at about 1/3 of the speed and took much longer to build. Katrina was also held back by a dry ridge that kept feeding dry air into it. God, now that I remember, imagine what Katrina COULD have done if that dryu ridge hadn't chomped on her for about a day. Inconceivable. Unfortunately, Rita doesn't have anything like that at all...

The problem with Rita is that she is covering alot more distance/quicker so it has a greater source of energy from the warm waters then Katrina did.

As for the people who say that Katrina took alot of the energy out of the GOM, lets remember its been 3 weeks of hot temperatures since Katrinca came through. The SST's have had a chance to rebound some and i'm sure that enough mixing has occured that I personally don't see the waters Katrina mixed up as slowing this monster's growth down.(and I think that the explosive growth we've seen proves that as well).

I told Hugh in a private msg that all of us amateurs AND the professionals are thinking of Rita about 6-12 hours behind what its actually doing. We were talking of it like it was a CAT2 when it was already a CAT3 and heading for a 4. 40mb in 24 hours is astounding! We need to get ahead of this one.