Orange TX Police Department

  Satellite view just before making landfall at Texas/Louisiana border

Hurricane Rita is the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the most intense tropical cyclone observed in the Gulf of Mexico. Rita caused $10 billion in damage on the U.S. Gulf Coast in September 2005. Rita was the seventeenth named storm, tenth hurricane, fifth major hurricane, and third Category 5 hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

Rita made landfall on September 24, 2005 near the Texas-Louisiana border as a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. It continued on through parts of southeast Texas. The storm surge caused extensive damage along the Louisiana and extreme southeastern Texas coasts and completely destroyed some coastal communities. The storm killed seven people directly; many others died in evacuations and from indirect effects.

Click here to view picture gallery of the destruction

from Hurricane Rita after it passed through Orange,

Texas