I was just thinking the other day that it sure seems like it has been a relatively slow hurricane season. Looks like that might change.
Reader Interactions
44Comments
Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
People are complicated. Love is not.
75% of people clapping liked the show!
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.
🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵
If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.
Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.
“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly
When I was faster i was always behind.
Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.
He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!
This really is a full service blog.
… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop
Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
Our messy unity will be our strength.
An almost top 10,000 blog!
Incertus
We can have thirty of those as long as they don’t come ashore–that’s fine with me. We’re in a house that’s pretty well situated to ride out a storm, fortunately, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it.
Anne Laurie
I’m waiting for the first Science-Denier to complain that
El Cid
Watching Hardball’d, and Tom Delay, who for some god-damned reason has to be on TV, is a birther. Chris Matthews is laughing at him. Delay whines that ‘buh one time I got sued to see if I’uz a resident of Texas’. Delay demands that Obama show him his gift certificate. Then corrects himelf. Matthews continues the lunacy. Delay is disputing the reliability of the newspaper announcements. I’m so glad that these important criminal right wingers maintain constant access to the major news media. It’s awesome. Delay is mad that when he got indicted they took his weapon away, he thinks that’s a violation of the 2nd Amendment. Yeah, okay, surely the 2nd Amendment was intended to let prisoners keep guns. Okay.
Makewi
If only Cap & Trade had passed already. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about all this pesky
weatherglobal warming.freelancer
@Makewi:
Piss off.
Anne Laurie
One minute after my first post. Impressive. There’s one troll who’s working hard for its leftover “McCain 2012” golf jacket…
Comrade Luke
I thought this was going to be about Bill Clinton.
gwangung
@freelancer: No, no, no…it’s “Fuck off!”
Remember, a “fuck off!” a day, keeps the blues away!
Leelee for Obama
@El Cid: GIFT CERTIFICATE! That, folks, is priceless!
Did Tweet fall on the floor? I wouldn’t have been able to keep the mocking laughter inside! Did Tom talk about his new gig? Glad I’ve never watched, cause I’d have to stop now. Guess letting arrested, accused felons keep their weapons was one of the things DeLay just didn’t get around to Hammering through the Congress before he “left”.
gwangung
@Anne Laurie: But not very good quality. She’s more a believer in quantity, so the individual posts suffer quite badly.
Makewi
@Anne Laurie:
As I’ve said before, as long as you pre-mock then you are shielded from any future criticism. I guess I’ll have to settle for not believing in junk science and for being against legislation that isn’t looking like it will get past the hoping and wishing stage.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t. I second the motion. Fuck off MakeWee.
How about “Hurricane BOB”? If so, it better be a powerfully lame storm that everyone laughs at.
tc125231
@Anne Laurie: Yea, the early bum gets the thumb. The work ethic is alive and well in conservative America.
Texas Dem
Not to get even more political, but have we had a hurricane Monica lately? What about Hillary? Paula? It would be interesting if we had hurricanes called Monica and Bill during the same season, preferably at the same time.
freelancer
@gwangung:
Oh yeah, I forgot we were dealing with the joy-killing troll, not the amusing one…
@Makewi:
FUCK OFF.
gwangung
@Makewi: Better.
Still not very good, though. You’re still substituting catch phrases for real zingers.
We can mark this “Makes an effort, but still needs improvement.”
Litlebritdifrnt
I will stop nervously checking on Bill once it goes away completely. NC sticks out on the side of the US like Jimmy Durante’s nose and when the forecasters confidently say “it will just skim the coast” they tend to forget that a slight wibble to the left means that NC ends up getting smacked, from Wilmington on up. I have never forgiven the forecasters since Dennis, when it hit us, sat over us for a week, went back out to sea, turned around and came right back at us. Not a single forecaster saw that, or warned us, right after that came Floyd and you all remember what happened to Eastern NC then (we were all under water, entire cities and towns were cut off for weeks), a family two houses down from me had to be pulled through the roof of their house from where they were sat in the attic as water had filled the house. Yup, will take everything the forecasters say with a pinch of salt until Bill is long gone. Luckily I have been using my thrift store visits twice a week to stock up on candles and oil lamps, and my cupboards and freezer look like a survivalists bunker.
tc125231
@Makewi: I know I am going to regret this, but can you be a little clearer on your definition of “junk” science? Do you accept:
1. The Copernican solar system?
2. Netwonian physics?
3. Einstein’s Soecial Theory of Relativity?
4. Quantum Mechanics?
5. Evolution?
6. Chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone layer?
6. Cigarettes and cancer?
Or do you merely have a problem with the Greenhouse Effect?
Just curious.
jacy
Hey, makewi,
How can I learn to “pre-mock”? That would certainly be a time-saver. Although probably less satisfying that actual mocking.
PS. Did you know that gravity is only a theory? What will those crazy scientists come up with next?
Linkmeister
You’d never know it, but we’ve already had two hurricanes form and take dead aim at us this season: Felicia and Guillermo. Fortunately for us, both broke up before they got to the Big Island.
There’s not only an East Coast Bias on ESPN toward the Yankees and Red Sox, there’s one in the news toward hurricanes. In their minds, only Atlantic ones count. We’re resigned to it.
Anne Laurie
@tc125231: I prefer to avoid direct eye contact. One day you’re joking about turning the trash bin into a wildlife habitat, and the next, you’ve got a county official in full Hazmat gear lecturing you about troll latrines and brain-damaging roundworms.
El Cid
Outgoing longwave infrared photons which experience a decline in the rate at which they leave Earth’s upper atmosphere and enter space and thus carry heat away from the Earth due to the presence of additional CO2 or other greenhouse gases are gay, and probably French too.
Anne Laurie
@Linkmeister:
I remember being told in school that hurricanes only happened in the Atlantic, because similar storms in the Pacific were typhoons. You’d think the news stations might have updated their weather guidebooks since the 1960s, what with the Weather Channel(s) and all. Probably doesn’t help that John Cole is an Easterner (WV), as are TimF (Pittsburgh), DougJ (Rochester), MichaelD (Atlanta)and AnneLaurie (Boston)…
Anne Laurie
@Litlebritdifrnt: Sending positive thoughts that Bill will stay well away from landfall, far enough that even your garden produce doesn’t suffer from high winds/torrential rains!
Linkmeister
@Anne Laurie: Typhoons west of the Int’l Date Line, hurricanes east. We’re east. :)
Makewi
@freelancer:
I never killed joy. I only wounded her a little.
Comrade Kevin
@Incertus: Yeah, fuck those people in Bermuda, who cares if they all die, eh?
Makewi
@Linkmeister:
Don’t know if you’ve see this, but I found it a useful when deciding whether to move my lanai furniture last week.
Makewi
@tc125231:
Actually, I only have problems with the cause of the greenhouse effect, and more so the ludicrous ideas which have been proposed to deal with it.
Makewi
@jacy:
I’m sorry, our scores indicate that you are not qualified to learn this useful skill. But cheer up, there’s always next year!
Linkmeister
@Makewi: No, haven’t seen that one. I look at the Central Pacific site, or click through from KITV/KGMB/KHNL.
Went through Iwa and Iniki. Don’t want to do it again.
gwangung
@Makewi: Actually, the causes of the greenhouse effect is pretty basic atmospheric physics…I doubt you can have much problem with that.
Anthropogenic causes…that I can see.
Down and Out of Sài Gòn
Typhoons west of the Int’l Date Line, hurricanes east. We’re east. :)
Not quite, Linkmeister. When it’s south of the equator, the work used is cyclone. There’s a whole swath of words. Not that it matters what you call it when you’re in the middle of one.
Linkmeister
@Down and Out of Sài Gòn: Yeah, you’re right. As you say, the semantics don’t matter much if your windows are being battered and your roof is blowing off.
Last time I had lanai furniture in my playroom and in the master bedroom, neighbors from across the street and friends from Kauai hiding out here, and a bunch of scared cats and dogs.
El Cid
@gwangung: I can see it, too, but you can actually measure the likely sources of the additional greenhouse gases, and climate scientists do in fact take into account the different sources.
Makewi
@El Cid:
The key words being “likely sources” and “measure”, both of which have their own set of problems. Further, the legislative solutions presented by our government have been, so far, laughable.
@gwangung
Anthropogenic causes…that I can see.
That’s what I meant.
Hawaii is not a State, and so I expect the IRS to be in contact with me soon with an apology and a big fat check.
Molly
@Makewi: “I never killed joy. I only wounded her a little.”
That actually made me smile. :)
Grew up spending my summers in Galveston. Went back this weekend for the first time since Hurricane Ike. Dear God. Though there has been some progress, everything is still pretty trashed.
There’s a hotel called The Flagship, sits out over the Gulf on a very strong pier. The hotel survived, but there’s a huge hole in it, like a giant punched it. Galveston needs NO MORE hurricane drama, but since they’re having to tear the hotel down anyway, it’d give the media some great footage if we took another hit and The Flagship ended up in the Gulf.
Good times.
Fencedude
@Comrade Kevin:
Bermuda is perfectly capable of handling Hurricanes, and does not need those of us in other Hurricane prone areas worrying about them too.
And yeah, what Incertus said.
PaulW
Why be surprised. Hurricane season really picks up in August.
Although there have been reports Obama has been standing on the Delaware shoreline blowing cool air towards Africa to minimize the weather conditions…
Fencedude
Yeah, let no one forget that Andrew was an August storm.
The frontloading of the season (especially in 2004 and 2005) was highly abnormal.
Church Lady
Most of the hurricanes that I can remember, especially the worst ones, seem to be in either late August or in September. This would certainly seem to make sense, as the warmer the water, the stronger the storm gets.
gwangung
Key words: multiple methodologies, multiple tests.
This is not a scientific controversy that’s active in the literature. Scientists are not dumb–and they’re a hell of a lot more cut-throat than random blog commenters.
Anne Laurie
Time-tested hurricane prediction chant from the islands:
April, come she will;
May, she will stay;
June, too soon;
July, stand by;
August, come she must;
September, remember;
October, all over.
(yup, repurposed as a Simon & Garfunkel ballad in the 1970s.)
SFPhil
IE7 interface all screwed up again. Trying to post a test comment to see if that will clear it up.