They're not too fond of Virginia lately, either...
Hurricane Frances brushed past several Caribbean islands on its way toward Florida, as Tropical Storm Gaston moved out to sea after killing three people and leaving a trail of damage in Virginia and South Carolina. Frances was 175 miles (285 kilometers) east-northeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico as of 11 a.m. local time, moving west at 15 mph (24 kph), according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center. The storm is expected to pass north of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico today, over the Bahamas on Thursday and then make landfall near Jacksonville, Florida, at about 8 a.m. Saturday. The storm, the fourth hurricane of the 2004 season, is a Category 4 hurricane with 135 mph winds and higher gusts, capable of blowing down trees, shrubs and signs and destroying mobile homes, and may get stronger in the next 24 hours.
``There's a lot of uncertainty associated with these forecasts,'' hurricane specialists Richard Pasch said in a telephone interview. ``Really, it's just a waiting game right now. Right now nobody's off the hook from southern Florida to the Carolinas.'' Some forecast models have Frances moving further west and closer to the U.S. coast, while others show the storm turning east away from Florida, hurricane specialist Lixion Avila said. As much as 3 inches of rain is expected, and ``large and dangerous waves'' are possible, he said. Hurricane Charley, the most powerful hurricane to hit the U.S. since Andrew in 1992, struck Florida's west coast earlier this month, killing at least 20 people and leaving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power for days.
Posted by: Steve ||
08/31/2004 2:08:54 PM ||
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#1
Frances, Gaston, and I've heard the that the next one is to be called Hermine. Do you suppose they're doing that on purpose?
#2
The names are all picked in advance of the season, alternating male and female names.
BTW, Hermine already exists. It blew up from a low in the Atlantic off the Carolina coast and is heading north, well off the East Coast.
After what happened to us last year during Isabel, and what happened yesterday courtesy of Gaston, I'm not looking forward to Frances. Looks right now like it will turn north at Florida and head up the coast, but I fervently hope it goes into the Gulf instead. (Sorry to all Gulf citizens; we're just water-logged up here.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/31/2004 15:04 Comments ||
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#3
the FSU grand ensemble is pushing the landfall south again.
The Colditz spirit lives on. (Sorry, TGA!)
A bold amphibious escape bid by a bear at Berlin zoo has been foiled in a dramatic shoot-out. The bear was armed? No? I'd guess it was more of a shoot than a shoot-out then...
Juan the Andean spectacled bear first paddled across a moat using a log for a raft, then scaled a wall. Finally he appeared to commandeer a bicycle, before zookeepers with brooms cornered him, and a colleague picked him off with a tranquiliser gun. "For you, Herr BÀr, ze fun is over."
"Just think what could have happened," said a mother who saw the bear escape and head for the children's carousel. "It went straight for the playground", said Liane Hertrampf to the Berliner Kurier newspaper. Going straight for the broom store would've been scarier to me.
Parents grabbed their children and fled as they realised what was happening. 300lb bears play where they want to, just like they sleep where they want to. It's an ursine faux pas to get in their way, even if you're only five years old.
But the zoo's deputy director Heiner Kloes was not so concerned. "Spectacled bears eat both vegetables and meat but children tend not to be on their menu," he said. "I'd have been a lot more worried if one of our polar bears had escaped," he added. "Der pengvinz und kinder - zat is, after all, zeir natural fodder."
He did say, however, that he was "alarmed at how some fathers were too busy filming the bear to check where their children were". "My kid's getting a proper childhood - dirt, bruises, bear chases. None of this smothering shit..."
After being stopped with darts from a tranquiliser gun, 110kg (294lb) Juan was carried back to his enclosure. "With solitary confinement for a month and no red cross parcels. Pieces of what appeared to be a home-made glider were destroyed in front of the other bears."
Posted by: Bulldog ||
08/31/2004 4:46:22 AM ||
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#9
We hereby condemn the vile harassment of our brother Juan. He only sought releif from the bars and moats of confinement, and, in the spirit of Nemo the fish wanted only to return to his home and live a life of freedom.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
