Mobile homes and apartments also sustained significant damage or total destruction. In all, nine Texas counties and five Louisiana Parishes were declared disaster areas after the storm. Electric service was disrupted in some areas of both Texas and Louisiana for several weeks. Texas reported the most deaths from the hurricane, where 113 deaths were reported, 107 of which were associated with the evacuation of the Houston metropolitan area. Moderate to severe damage was reported across the lower Mississippi Valley. Rainfall from the storm and its associated remnants extended from Louisiana to Michigan. Rainfall peaked at in Central Louisiana. Several tornadoes were also associated with the hurricane and its subsequent remnants. Throughout the path of Rita, damage totaled about $18.5 billion (2005 USD). As many as 120 deaths in four U.S. states were directly related to the hurricane. On September 7, 2005, a tropical wave emerged off the west coast of Africa and moved westward into the Atlantic Ocean. Failing to produce organized, deep atmospheric convection, the disturbance was not monitored by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) for tropical cyclogenesis. Convection associated with the system increased briefly late on September 13 before dissipating shortly thereafter. At roughly the same time, a remnant surface trough had developed from a dissipating stationary front and began to drift westward north of the Lesser Antilles. Meanwhile, the tropical wave slowly became better organized and was first noted in the NHC's Tropical Weather Outlooks on September 15 while northeast of Puerto Rico. The wave merged with the surface trough two days later, triggering an increase in convective activity and organization. A subsequent decrease in wind shear enabled for additional organization, and at 0000 UTC on September 18, the NHC estimated that the storm system had organized enough to be classified as a tropical depression, the eighteenth disturbance during the hurricane season to do so. At the time, the disturbance, classified as Tropical Depression Eighteen, was roughly east of Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos and had developed banding features. In generally favorable conditions for tropical development, the depression quickly organized, and attained tropical storm strength at 1800 UTC that day based on data from reconnaissance flights and nearby ships and weather buoys. As a result, the tropical storm was named Rita. However, an increase in moderate southerly vertical wind shear as the result of a nearby upper-level low subdued continued intensification and displaced convective activity to the north of Rita's center of circulation. Once the upper-level low weakened, Rita's center of circulation reformed to the north, compensating for the disorganization that resulted from the wind shear.