The hurricane hunters earned their pay with Felix:

NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft N42RF experienced a truly awesome and terrifying mission into the heart of Hurricane Felix last night. Flying at 10,000 feet through Felix at 7pm EDT last night, N42RF dropped a sonde into the southeast eyewall. The swirling winds of the storm were so powerful that the sonde spun a full 3/4 circle around the eye before splashing into the northwest eyewall. It is VERY rare for a sonde to make nearly a complete circle around the eye like this. As the plane entered the eye of the now Category 5 hurricane, they found a 17-mile wide stadium lit up by intense lightning on all sides. The pressure at the bottom of the eye had hit 934 mb, and the temperature outside, a balmy 77 degrees at 10,000 feet. This is about 24 degrees warmer than the atmosphere normally is at that altitude, and a phenomenally warm eye for a hurricane. N42RF then punched into the northwest eyewall. Flight level winds hit 175 mph, and small hail lashed the airplane as lighting continued to flash. Then, the crew hit what Hurricane Hunters fear most–a powerful updraft followed a few seconds later by an equally powerful downdraft. The resulting extreme turbulence and wind shear likely made the aircraft impossible to control. Four G’s of acceleration battered the airplane, pushing the aircraft close to its design limit of 6 G’s. Although no one was injured and no obvious damage to the airplane occurred, the aircraft commander wisely aborted the mission and N42RF returned safely to St. Croix. N42RF is the same aircraft that survived a pounding of 5.6 g’s in the eyewall of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

And that low developing off of Florida’s east coast is starting to make me a little nervous, and eyeing the shutters.

Looks like I should be eating more of these foods. The only way I’ve ever eaten much beets is in borscht. I’d like to eat more cabbage, but Patricia doesn’t like it. What do you do with Swiss chard? Salad?

[Via John Scalzi]

[Update a little later]

She says she does so like cabbage. She just doesn’t like it cooked, or with corned beef. That is, she doesn’t like corned beef, so she doesn’t like corned beef and cabbage.

Looks like I should be eating more of these foods. The only way I’ve ever eaten much beets is in borscht. I’d like to eat more cabbage, but Patricia doesn’t like it. What do you do with Swiss chard? Salad?

[Via John Scalzi]

[Update a little later]

She says she does so like cabbage. She just doesn’t like it cooked, or with corned beef. That is, she doesn’t like corned beef, so she doesn’t like corned beef and cabbage.

Looks like I should be eating more of these foods. The only way I’ve ever eaten much beets is in borscht. I’d like to eat more cabbage, but Patricia doesn’t like it. What do you do with Swiss chard? Salad?

[Via John Scalzi]

[Update a little later]

She says she does so like cabbage. She just doesn’t like it cooked, or with corned beef. That is, she doesn’t like corned beef, so she doesn’t like corned beef and cabbage.

I just got a spam. Subject: “Beware of fake pills.”

Well, actually, in the tropical Atlantic. Is Felix forming? And will it be a repeat of Dean? That’s what the current models look like, at least in terms of track. If so, let’s hope that it’s not similar in intensity.

Busy day (and week) ahead, but if I don’t post anything else today, happy birthday, Glenn!

Keep ’em coming. That’s my advice for a long life–have lots of birthdays.

Key West is a sand-covered mountain, almost 2135 millimeters above sea level. It is said that it is one of the highest mountains in the range called the Florida Keys. They jut up far above the Atlantic, and can be seen from hundreds of yards away by the approaching sailors. But only when the pull of the moon is low, and the seas are calm, and the two-foot waves don’t blot out the view.

Key West is the furthest southern point in the land they call the United States of America. Except for Hawaii. At that southern point, there is a buoy that says “Havana–ninety miles.” Havana, where the young women roll the cigars between their dusky, unshaven thighs, after tromping the leaves with their muy sexy unshod feet.

Lying in the road by the buoy is a dead six-toed cat. It has been there for days. No one knows what the cat was seeking at that latitude.

We went to Key West. The woman and I walked the streets that he walked.

Key West was hot. It was very hot. Imagine the hottest place that you have ever been. Then imagine ten times that hot. Then imagine harder. You still will have no conception of how hot it was.

The sweat dripped down our faces, searing our eyes with the salt of our dessicating bodies. The sweat poured down. It poured down like the thick, rich red blood gushing out of the buttocks of a fat tourist, who did not outrun the bull in Pamplona.

The sun blazed above us, like a giant ball of flaming gases, burning at temperatures of millions of degrees.

It burned our skin. It burned our skin in such a way that even the soothing balm of aloe from the CVS could not cure. It reddened it, reddened it like the lobsters on which we supped in the evenings, after the sun had dropped into the sea, with the sweat still running down us. The lobsters were out of season, so they were fresh-frozen. But they were lobsters.

We drank drinks. Strong drinks. Manly drinks, though she was, and still is, despite the fact that we were in Key West, a woman. Not a fresh-frozen woman, though the women were out of season as well.

We also drank sweet drinks. Drinks with umbrellas in them, to forget. To forget what?

We don’t know. We forgot.

Was it the drinks? Was it the low ceiling in the converted attic in which we stayed and for which we paid over two hundred bucks a night? And because we were not munchkins, or hunchbacks, continually confused walls and ceilings, and disrupted them with our noggins, and bled profusely from our scalps?

It could be the concussions talking, but we forgot.

It made us rethink our lives, and their purpose. It made us rethink our vacation planning methods. And then, with the skin peeling from the backs of our arms, and the backs of our legs, and backs of…well…our backs…we left.

Lileks won’t be covering sewer bond proposals, after all. He’s got a whole new gig at the Strib.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Hey, the guy is actually blogging! For pay!

It’s not just the daily Bleat. He’s got a whole new bunch of posts since I linked it this morning. You can actually refresh and see fresh stuff throughout the day. Just like a blog!

What would we do without geeks with too much time on their hands?