Even though it’s situated way out in the middle of the subtropical Pacific Ocean, Hawaii doesn’t get as many major hurricanes as one might think, which made this week’s visit by Hurricane Lane even more spectacular and rare:
The Central Pacific gets few hurricanes and tropical storms. The Atlantic or Eastern Pacific usually see many more named storms.
Hawaii is a small target in a vast ocean, and isn't often threatened. Hawaii gets a named storm within 60 miles of its coastline about once every four years on average, forecasters say. Lane could become a further rarity if its center crosses land. Only two hurricanes have made landfall in Hawaii since the 1950s: Hurricane Dot in 1959, and Hurricane Iniki in 1992.
Hurricane Lane tracked periously close to doing a grand tour of the entire archipelago. But despite the rain and winds the islands did receive, it could have been much worse.
- It’s taken years, but I’ve become rather addicted to Twitter. It’s like an unending comment section of snark and serious. Follow the insanity at @SAndrewsDKos and if I can even halfway tell you came from the Big Orange, I’ll return the favor.
- A turtle with no shell: What is (or was) the prehistoric world coming to?
- Likewise from the prehistoric world, this person was a hybrid between neanders and a poorly understood clade of early humans called Denisovans.
- From the vast halls of economic
voodoo science, Mr. Trump believes that without his remarkable brain, the stock market will tank. Trust me folks, the stock market will indeed tank, someday. It will tank many times, in fact,—maybe next week, maybe later this year, maybe not until long after we finally rid ourselves of this meddlesome, executive poser. But if performance is tied to Mr. Trump’s brain, well, there will also be bull markets ahead a’plenty when that drag is removed.
There is some wonderful video of our moon set to classical music below the fold.