Hurricane!

I don’t even have it on my radar to go and dive off the coast of Texas or Louisiana but if I did, I may want to wait a bit.

Even as Bush and Cheney and the Army of the Night, aka, the corporate news media, run around America shouting that it is OK for them to spy illegally on us all, they refuse to obey Congressional demands for information, haughtily declaring that it is super top secret and nya, nya noogies.

There is some controversy over whether or not 2005 was actually the warmest year. Data from groups besides NASA did not take into account the Arctic regions, which were warmer this year than in previous years, bumping 2005 into the lead. Climate change has also been to blame for the ridiculous amount of activity this hurricane season, with a total of 27 tropical storms.

Federal officials said the 442-foot ship's hull ruptured and spilled the oil after it collided with a submerged oil platform wrecked by Hurricane Rita in September. Federal records show at least 167 Gulf platforms were damaged or destroyed during the active 2005 hurricane season. Many of these are submerged or so damaged that the warning beacons on them no longer function, and federal officials acknowledge they have no idea how many have working marker lights.

Today I got some junk mail from Allstate Insurance telling me how I could save on my homeowner's insurance by going with them. Of course, this morning I read in the paper about how they've won a round in court over their refusal to pay expenses for homeowners who were unable to return to their houses after Hurricane Rita.

This piece of legislation was spawned by Hurricane Katrina and given a boost by Hurricane Rita. It mainly creates a new federal bureau to purchase flood-ruined properties from their flood-insurance-free owners, package the properties, and resell the properties to developers.

The year before, we faced a similar dilemma on a smaller scale, as local media pounded us for shelter information and updates with Hurricane Ivan. We got around that issue by pushing the assignment desks and producers to a page on our website that was updated every hour. We even pushed that information to police departments and other dispatch agencies to use as an online resource for people calling from the evacuation routes. It worked like a charm, and within a half-day our incoming media traffic was again manageable.

Here’s a panoramic photo Al took of the damage from Hurricane Ivan [summer before last] still being repaired [click on the picture for a full-size image (1.5 Mb)].

Indeed, the electric fields above Hurricane Emily were among the strongest ever measured by the aircraft’s sensors over any storm. “We observed steady fields in excess of 8 kilovolts per meter,” says Blakeslee. “That is huge–comparable to the strongest fields we would expect to find over a large land-based ‘mesoscale’ thunderstorm…”

Meanwhile, the Orlando Ledger has some opinions to vent about the upcoming assessment to Citizens’ revenue shortfall and the windfall sales tax revenue in the wake of Katrina and Wilma:

Even though I previously reported that the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season had ended, it appears my entry of four weeks ago was premature. The season acutally ended today as Tropical Depression Zeta finally dissipated. Forecaster Stewart at the National Hurricane Center reports:

21. Considered opening a water park in New Orleans during the Hurricane season.

We changed the wedding date again. It’s currently set to May 27, 2007, exactly two years from our engagement date. We chose May because the Bahamas offer the best prices that month, but it’s before hurricane season kicks in. In addition I think it’ll be special to marry on the date of our engagement.

5 - Even though we already had the busiest hurricane season in years, expect a greater one to come in 2006. And yet, many lives will be saved because of the prayer and contrition which is affecting much of Louisiana, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Galveston, Texas was spared the fury of Hurricane Emily, but Katrina found Louisiana unprepared. Expect San Francisco to be next, for this city has rejected the Word of God.

As we see with the slow reconstruction in the US following Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, critical infrastructure is often overlooked or overshadowed by other needs, and the consequences of that oversight will be unrealized until another disaster occurs. In South Asia, the tsunami detection system should take priority, and yet the countries can't agree on how a regional system would operate. So, a piecemeal approach is going forward with predictable mixed results. Those countries that field better systems will be better capable of warning their populations should another tsunami occur. A nation that deploys a less sophisticated system may end up costing lives.

So you thought hurricane season was over? So did I, but Tropical Storm Zeta is out there, 3830 mi from my house.