Humberto Update:
Wunder Blog : Weather Underground
A surprise Hurricane Humberto ripped into Texas near the Louisiana border this morning, bringing winds of 85 mph and torrential rains to the coast. Humberto didn’t even exist yesterday morning, and grew from a tropical depression at 11am EDT to a hurricane just 14 hours later. As the hurricane intensified, it grew in size and height, allowing the storm to respond to upper-level winds that changed its course to a north-northeastly path. This allowed Humberto to stay over water parallel to the coast for the crucial hours needed for it to reach hurricane strength. Storms like Humberto give us the sobering reminder that as much as hurricane forecasting has improved in recent years, there is still much we do not understand–particularly in regards to intensity forecasting. If Humberto had had another 12-24 hours over water, it could have been a major hurricane that would have hit without enough time to evacuate those at risk.
Waking this morning it appears the storm has blown on by SE Texas and is making it’s way through Louisiana already. So the three day rain event became a half day rain event here and is threatening those further east. When I looked at the models, one of them has the storm circling back into the eastern Gulf and coming back for another swipe at Texas…
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Each week I get an email from Rob Brezsney with his version of this week’s horoscope. I look forward to them because of the slightly skewed way he looks at the world. Almost every week gives me something to meditate on. This week was no exception…
Free Will Astrology : Aquarius Horoscope
Aquarius (January 20-February 19)
I want to call your attention to the title of a Christian-themed inspiration book by John Ortberg: If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. You don’t really need to read it, because simply meditating on the theme will yield all the insight you need. To jumpstart your intuition, I’ll add a corollary: If you want to talk to a burning bush, you should initiate the conversation. Don’t wait for the bush to break the ice.SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
A thousand years from today, everyone you know will be long dead and forgotten. There’ll be nothing left of the life you love, no evidence that you ever walked this planet. That, at least, is what the fundamentalist materialists would have you believe. But suppose the truth is very different? What if in fact every little thing you do subtly alters the course of world history? What if your day-to-day decisions will actually help determine how the human species navigates its way through the epic turning point we’re living through? And finally, what if you will be alive in a thousand years, reincarnated into a fresh body and in possession of the memories of the person you were back in this era? These are my hypotheses. These are my prophecies. Which is why I say: Live as if your soul is eternal.The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
What a concept…”every little thing you do subtly alters the course of world history.” Would that thought in our mind change the way you went through life? What would you do different? Hmmm….?
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Leon Hale is meditating on the words used to convey the story. While his musings are aimed at the reporting craftsman, I tend to think the thoughts he puts forth would be usable to the blogging wordsmith as well.
Searching for the perfect words | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
EVERY few days a word or a phrase I read in this newspaper causes me to pause and meditate on the struggles that reporters go through in composing their sentences.
Such a word was in a Page 1 story back when we were all watching Hurricane Dean. A Chronicle reporter wrote that the storm “spun toward the Mexican Gulf Coast today after bludgeoning the Yucatan Peninsula.”
In all the years I’ve been following tropical storms, that’s the first time I’ve read that a hurricane bludgeoned the land.
It must be a case of being more aware of the way words are strung together now that I am regularly trying to put them on a string myself. Word combinations that sing…Sometimes touching the heart, sometimes raising a stink, sometime starting a conversation…Some writers tend to speak a language that resonates to me in a particular way. It is these writers I tend to return to on a regular basis.
