Isabel
I feel a need to bend to the meme-of-the-day and mention the imminent arrival of Hurricane Irene Isabel. Now, it appears that Irene Isabel will have spent much of her energy in the Atlantic by the time she makes landfall (I think she’s at category 2 at the moment). This is doesn’t do much to ease my anticipation.
In Colorado big storms just happen. Well, they don’t “just” happen. A big storm is hard to miss. But a Colorado snow storm might drop 4 inches, 4 feet, or nothing at all. I lost track of the number of storms that never materialized, and never got over walking outside to discover that small flurries had turned into tall drifts.
But hurricanes are a lot bigger than snow storms. They’re a lot easier to track and measure. This means that forecasts have been predicting the impact of Irene down to the hour. In Colorado I thought it was impressive when a storm arrived the day it was forecast to. Needless to say, its a different experience to be told that a hurricane should pass your way sometime around 2:00pm on Thursday.
See also: National Hurricane Center.
More Irene Isabel commentary: Trish, Jean, Jason, Justin, Sam.