What can Hurricane Rita do?

Hurricane Rita has the potential to flood an area almost twice the size of New Orleans when it reaches shore Saturday, causing tens of billions of dollars in damage to the Houston metropolitan area of 4 million people and plunging another major gulf coast metropolis into disarray.

A study performed last year by the engineering firm Dodson & Associates in Houston found that a Category 5 storm could inundate 369 square miles of Harris County, which contains Houston and some of its suburbs. The study estimated the total cost of a worst-case storm at $80 billion, with 75% due to flooding and the rest from wind damage.