Yesterday was the statistical peak of hurricane season, and we haven’t even had to consider putting up the shutters yet this year, at least in south Florida. Of course, I’m probably speaking too soon.

[Update mid morning]

Is Humberto about to form? It’s still too far out to worry about it, but this is the first potential storm that I’ve seen this season that any models indicate could eventually target Florida. But it could also head south like Dean and Felix did, or up into the Atlantic and affect no one, as so many storms did last year. Here’s more from Jeff Masters:

I expect this will allow 91L to develop into a tropical depression on Thursday. The HWRF brings it to a Category 3 hurricane by Sunday, at a position near 19N 58W, about 500 miles east-northeast of Puerto Rico. This is too aggressive an intensification rate, but I expect 91L will be at least a strong tropical storm by Sunday. The 06Z run of the GFDL model is more believable, making 91L a 55 mph tropical storm about 800 miles east of Puerto Rico on Sunday. This storm is definitely a threat to the Lesser Antilles Islands. It is too early to say if the northern islands are more at risk, as the current model runs are indicating. The system may represent a threat to the U.S. East Coast ten or more days from now, but there is no way to judge the likelihood of this.

I’m going to LA on Sunday for the week, and Patricia will be up in Orlando. It will be just our luck if the hurricane comes while we’re out of town and can’t prepare for it. I may be putting up shutters on Saturday, depending on what the track look like.

And this is a little disturbing:

Wind shear the past 11 days (Figure 3) has been below normal over most of the MDR. These conditions are expected to continue over at least the next two weeks, according to the latest forecast from the GFS model. African dust activity has been quite low the past month, and I don’t see any changes to the general circulation pattern that would change this. Steering current patterns are expected to remain the same as we’ve seen since since late July, with a series of weak troughs and ridges rippling across the Atlantic, and no major troughs or ridges locking into place. This steering pattern favors a near-normal chance of hurricane strikes for the entire Atlantic. Due to the weak nature of the troughs of low pressure expected, we’ll have fewer recurving storms that miss land than normal. Indeed, all but one of the seven named storms we’ve had this year have affected land (Chantal was the exception).

Even though we’re past theoretical peak, it could be a long season.

I agree with Virginia. I’ve been living in south Florida for three years now (almost exactly–I came out here on Labor Day of 2004, just in time to board and shutter up the house for Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne (scroll to the bottom and work your way up, if you’re interested)), and it still doesn’t feel like home to me. And I don’t think it ever will, in the way that LA did, and still does, when I visit.

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.