Is Mother Nature going to sock it to the US Gulf states again?

See these excerpts from a Reuters UK article about [currently]category 2 Hurricane Rita:

"Rita grew from a tropical storm to a hurricane with 85 mph (136 mph) winds as it battered the fragile Keys. All 80,000 residents had been ordered out of the island chain but many stayed behind in boarded-up homes as stormwater submerged parts of the only highway linking them to the Florida mainland.

The hurricane was expected to strengthen further as it moved into the Gulf of Mexico where deadly Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc three weeks ago....


Texas seemed the most likely target for Rita's second strike, but Louisiana would still get the outer bands of the storm during the weekend.

A Louisiana official warned that levees in New Orleans, where hundreds died in Katrina's floods, would fail again if the city were smashed by a new storm surge. Major Ray Nagin suspended plans for some residents to return to the devastated city.

Oil companies only starting to recover from Katrina evacuated Gulf oil rigs. Private forecasters said there was a 40 percent chance that damaging hurricane-force winds would directly affect major Gulf energy production areas.

The Navy began moving its remaining fleet of Katrina relief vessels, including the hospital ship Comfort, away from the Gulf Coast to ride out any potential battering from Rita.

The 1,100 Hurricane Katrina refugees still in Houston's two mass shelters faced another evacuation on Tuesday as the city found itself in the possible path of Rita. They were to be sent to Fort Chafee, Arkansas...."

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?

-snip-

Here are my questions to Mudcat scientists & other Mudcat posters: are there more big hurricanes than usual hitting the USA this year, and if so, does global warming have anything to do with this?

My third question is if this hurricane really hits Galveston, Texas or Houston, Texas or wherever, who is in charge of FEMA?