I was hoping to avoid it this year, but that was wishful thinking. It is ironic, though, that the first hurricane of the season is coming right up the Florida peninsula. Hope it’s not a harbinger of the next two or three months.

The scary thing is that the NHS is saying there’s a possibility of strengthening to a two or three before it heads into the swamp. It would probably lose some strength over land, but a semi-major hurricane coming all the way up Florida, then continuing on up the coast into the Carolinas is going to cause a lot of cumulative damage, even if it’s not as intense as Katrina was, particularly considering property values in south Florida. I just hope the track doesn’t shift even further east and scrub us directly or from just off shore, in which case we might actually have to evacuate due to potential for flooding from surge.

It should also be noted that the track of this storm takes it just to the west of KSC. They’ll have to roll the Shuttle back (or at least start preparing for it–they could change their minds for a period of another day or so). Probably no launch this week (and maybe none next unless they can get some kind of accommodation with the Russians to resolve the schedule conflict with the Soyuz mission).