Hi Irma/Maria, how you doin'?

Stay safe, y'all.

It's also statistically undercut by the fact that it was a shit study and the people who did it don't know how to do statistical analyses properly.

It pains me in my cold, dark heart that news organizations still treat it as if it were a legitimate piece of scholarship.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094715300517

Thanks, Poet. I actually just moved to Canada at the end of last week, so I get to avoid Irma (if it happens to go up through the Gulf and South).

I have several friends and family in the paths of Harvey and now possibly Irma, so I'm hoping they all remain safe. My TX friends were, thankfully, far enough north in the state that they avoided a lot of the damage. I can't imagine what the people in Houston are having to go through.

It's pretty scary stuff. I used to live in the Florida panhandle and, though I miss it sometimes, I'm kind of glad I don't. I only lived down there for 3 years, but I got evacuated for hurricanes 5 times - one of those times was for Hurricane Ivan, which pretty much leveled half the city.

Irma looks like it's taking a similar path to the one Ivan and Katrina took, and it's looking just as strong, which is not a good sign.
I'm hoping that Irma isn't as bad as they're predicting, but it's not looking good.

Actually, there's no real place to evacuate to right now, aside from peeps in the Keys (evacuations started yesterday for them) and people close to the water (evacuations start today for them).

The cone covers all of South Florida in the latest update and it's still early. People could evacuate to the panhandle, to Georgia or SC, and end up getting creamed there. If the thing goes straight over Lake Okeechobee, people who evacuated to inland Palm Beach County could have it the worst of all.

Yes, I've seen that. When Sandy was forecast, I warned some running club friends who were notoriously careless about stuff like this. (As someone who grew up in Buffalo blizzard country, I'm the type who is always well stocked with water, canned goods, flashlight, etc.)

They scoffed at the notion of a hurricane hitting the New York area particularly hard, and moreover, they noted they were all going to be in a vacation house upstate, not by the ocean. I wrung my hands and explained that hurricanes can shift, that houses and infrastructure up north are not built for hurricanes, etc., to please stock up, etc.

Well. They laughed and ignored me. As it happened, the hurricane did shift. Lower Manhattan flooded, was damaged pretty badly and lost power, as did sections of Brooklyn, New Jersey, etc., but where I am on the upper west side, we didn't lose power, and (that part of the city being on higher ground) we didn't flood. I spent a cozy day curled up with a book.

But their little vacation home upstate? Flooded. No power. No running water. No way out for days because of road conditions. And there they were, ill-supplied and soggy, with four children under five, two of them in diapers. At least they were safe, but it was a very unpleasant vacation for them.

Anyway. Stock up and be safe. Don't forget the scotch.

I'm in touch with the folks several times a day. No changing plans now; it's hold-your-breath time. All we can do is wait. Fortunately, after years of living on boats, they're au fait with preparing and getting the best weather information.

They're in good spirits, but under no illusions. We assume that we'll lose contact eventually, and that they'll pop up happily on the other side.

Take care, guys.