Want to see something really scary?

Click this link: Ike Animation

I spent much of yesterday absolutely engrossed in weather sites, hurricane sites to be precise.

The funny thing was that the same types of arguments arose in debating the storm as do on financial sites when debating inflation/deflation or whether stock "xyz" is going to soar or crash.

Sadly, the effect of making a wrong call with a hurricane, as in the question of evacuation, is a bit more serious and immediate than making a wrong call on a stock.

Trolls, it seems, are everywhere.

On the bright side I learned a whole lot.

To wit: Did you know that NOAA releases data from a number of buoys in the Gulf (link here) so that you can check and see how nasty (and where) the seas are. At Shell drilling platform 42361, the winds are blowing at 105mph (91 knots) and the seas are rough. Yesterday the buoys were reporting 30+ foot waves.

According to this new measure: Integrated Kinetic Energy, Ike is the second most powerful Atlantic storm in the past 40 years (more powerful than Katrina or Rita by virtue of its vast wind field). I suspect this storm will do a lot of damage.

Have you ever read (or seen) a weatherman forecasting "certain death"...they're doing it now: All neighborhoods ... and possibly entire coastal communities ... will be inundated during the peak storm tide...Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one- or two-story homes will face certain death