Yep, this was our experience (thanks for the link Becca):
Hurricane planners have a little ditty that goes, “run from the water, hide from the wind.”
It means evacuate if you are in a coastal surge area, but hunker down if you are in an area that will get hurricane-force winds and rain only.
The biggest problem in Houston’s painful evacuation last week was that perhaps a million people, almost half of those who left, ran from the wind.
In a Category 3 storm or higher, my apartment complex would very likely be underwater thanks to storm surge. That’s why I left. We went to Conroe, where we would have had a scary night had Rita hit, but wouldn’t have been flooded. Yet half of Conroe evacuated as well. Why? They ran from the wind. As a result, the roads became so clogged that many people from my suburb and south (Webster, League City, Texas City, and even Galveston — all in the storm surge area) couldn’t get out.
I don’t fault people beyond the storm surge areas for wanting to leave, especially in the post-Katrina panic, but it was certainly an issue, and resulted in many people returning to Clear Lake and south to ride out the storm. If Rita had hit directly here, those who had to stay in the storm surge areas would not have been in a safe situation.
