Awesome view

This is a late afternoon satellite picture of Dean.

Should be Category 4 soon -- still headed for Yucatan and/or Texas.

Very powerful -- somebody's going to get hurt .... bad.

Dean getting his act together

Hurricane Dean is strengthening quickly.

If you have ANY interests in the Caribbean over the next few days OR in Cancun/Yucatan peninsula of Mexico into next week OR northern Mexico/Southern Texas and the entire western Gulf Coast late next week.

Here are the latest computer models -- of note is the GFDL track (in blue), which goes "through the goalpoast" into the Gulf of Mexico.

Also of note, most models show that Dean will become an extremely powerful hurricane. Some show it itensifying such that the surface pressure drops below 900 mb, which would be Katrina-esque.

There is nothing other than land to weaken this storm -- upper level conditions are perfect for strengthening and it is moving through bath-water warm seas so whereever first landfall is .......

Nifong's final disgrace: The dog ate my law license.

This is really too bad to be true.

Check it out.

Dean alert!

Hurricane forecasters are loathe to predict where storms may go beyond 3-5 days, but as a weather fanatic, I can tell you that there is strong model consensus that Tropical Storm Dean will plow through our just north of the Caribbean and either strike the Southeast Coast or enter the Gulf Of Mexico. Here is the 12z run of the GFS model which shows Dean emerging into the Gulf by Tuesday of next week. Other models shows the storm hitting Florida, then re-emerging into the Gulf. The southernmost projections shows the storm perhaps grazing the Yucatan and then striking Texas.

Here is an array of model runs, but only out to 5 days.

Bottom line: If you have travel plans in the Caribbean this weekend, you should watch Dean like a hawk.

And if you have travel plans anywhere on the east coast or Gulf coast the following week into the weekend of Aug. 24, you should keep a wary eye on the tropics.

The intelligentsia exposed

In some of my rantings against the global warming propaganda machine, I've argued that the hysteria generated on this topic is a product of the hard-left academia-types who will say or do anything to further their agenda of undermining capitalism and the free market system.

Left-wingers (and others) often scoff at this, saying "how much power do a bunch of professors really have?" and "there are tons of conservatives on college campuses."

This study absolutely should silence those scoffers.

As it turns out, college professors and others in the education field have contributed more money to federal politics than the oil industry and drugmakers, with a nearly unanimous goal of putting a Democrat in the White House.

These professors and such wield tremendous power and are unabashedly using to to advance a far-left agenda.

As a colleague of mine asked: You have to wonder while reading this why the heck schools/nonprofit institutions, some of which get state tax dollars, are donating to any political candidate.