I don’t know how much I’ll be posting before Wednesday, but this will stay bumped at the top, so look below it for fresh stuff. Have a great Christmas, for those who celebrate it, and a great holiday in general, even if you don’t.

Dennis Kucinich has lost a brother:

The county coroner said that an autopsy is set to be performed to determine the exact cause of death.

There were no signs of foul play.

Seriously, condolences and best wishes to the Kucinich family.

It was one of the driest seasons on record in Southern California this year. The grass and weeds in the local mountains was certainly tinder dry. With the arrival of the hot Santa Ana winds, the area was ripe for a fire, and sure enough, Malibu is in flames. I remember years ago going down to the strand in Manhattan Beach, and looking across the dark South Bay at the orange glow across the water the last time this happened.

It’s a beautiful area to live, but the wealthy residents should have to carry their own insurance. But I suspect that, just is the case on barrier islands and other flood and fire zones, they’ll get help from the federal taxpayers, most of whom make much less than Malibu residents, and can’t afford to live in such places, to rebuild once again.

[Update in the afternoon]

Wow, this sounds like it might be the worst Malibu fire in history. I’m hearing that Malibu Canyon is aflame, including the Presbyterian Church (if it’s the one I’m thinking of, it has a beautiful view of the ocean below–I attended a college roommate’s wedding there years ago), the Malibu Castle is engulfed in flames, and I’m sure that Hughes Research Lab (or whatever it’s called these days after all the acquisitions) and Pepperdine are threatened.

I had a first on Friday night–a Lileks-like moment. I’m often recognized by my name badge at space conferences, but when I checked in at the American counter at LAX on Friday night, the agent recognized my name on my driver’s license, and asked if I was the space blogger. He told me that space was supposed to be about exploration, not a jobs program. I told him that it actually was a jobs program, but that it should be about space settlement.

Anyway, thanks for the service–usually I have to schlep my bag over to the X-ray myself, but he told me that for Fort Lauderdale, he could put it on the conveyor behind him.

Virginia Postrel has a bad reason to be glad to be back in LA. Wish her good health.

Looks like we’ll dodge Ingrid, which is falling apart under shear. But this little aside from a much longer tropical blog post by Jeff Masters is a little worrying:

The GFS, ECMWF, and UKMET models all suggest a tropical depression may form in the Western Caribbean on Wednesday and move northwards into the Gulf of Mexico or over Florida.

I’m going to LA tomorrow, and not coming back until early next Saturday morning. I’d like to know a little more. How long will it take to move north, and how much (if any) will it intensify? Do the models have an opinion about that?

We could use a tropical depression here, and even a tropical storm, to help refill up the lake, which is still four feet less than normal (due to draining it last year as a precaution against a hurricane season that didn’t happen), as we head toward the dry season. But I can do without a major hurricane, particularly if I’m not here to shutter the house.

Well, it turned out that Humberto formed in the Gulf, instead of east of the Antilles. The tropical depression out there will probably become Ingrid in the next day or so. I don’t like the looks of the track. I’m not in the center of it, but it looks like it could go anywhere from the Florida straights to the Carolinas. Of course, it’s so far out that there’s no way to know–it could also end up heading north and out to sea. I just hope that we know better by Saturday, when we’ll have to decide whether or not to shutter before I go out of town.

Yesterday was the statistical peak of hurricane season, and we haven’t even had to consider putting up the shutters yet this year, at least in south Florida. Of course, I’m probably speaking too soon.

[Update mid morning]

Is Humberto about to form? It’s still too far out to worry about it, but this is the first potential storm that I’ve seen this season that any models indicate could eventually target Florida. But it could also head south like Dean and Felix did, or up into the Atlantic and affect no one, as so many storms did last year. Here’s more from Jeff Masters:

I expect this will allow 91L to develop into a tropical depression on Thursday. The HWRF brings it to a Category 3 hurricane by Sunday, at a position near 19N 58W, about 500 miles east-northeast of Puerto Rico. This is too aggressive an intensification rate, but I expect 91L will be at least a strong tropical storm by Sunday. The 06Z run of the GFDL model is more believable, making 91L a 55 mph tropical storm about 800 miles east of Puerto Rico on Sunday. This storm is definitely a threat to the Lesser Antilles Islands. It is too early to say if the northern islands are more at risk, as the current model runs are indicating. The system may represent a threat to the U.S. East Coast ten or more days from now, but there is no way to judge the likelihood of this.

I’m going to LA on Sunday for the week, and Patricia will be up in Orlando. It will be just our luck if the hurricane comes while we’re out of town and can’t prepare for it. I may be putting up shutters on Saturday, depending on what the track look like.

And this is a little disturbing:

Wind shear the past 11 days (Figure 3) has been below normal over most of the MDR. These conditions are expected to continue over at least the next two weeks, according to the latest forecast from the GFS model. African dust activity has been quite low the past month, and I don’t see any changes to the general circulation pattern that would change this. Steering current patterns are expected to remain the same as we’ve seen since since late July, with a series of weak troughs and ridges rippling across the Atlantic, and no major troughs or ridges locking into place. This steering pattern favors a near-normal chance of hurricane strikes for the entire Atlantic. Due to the weak nature of the troughs of low pressure expected, we’ll have fewer recurving storms that miss land than normal. Indeed, all but one of the seven named storms we’ve had this year have affected land (Chantal was the exception).

Even though we’re past theoretical peak, it could be a long season.

I agree with Virginia. I’ve been living in south Florida for three years now (almost exactly–I came out here on Labor Day of 2004, just in time to board and shutter up the house for Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne (scroll to the bottom and work your way up, if you’re interested)), and it still doesn’t feel like home to me. And I don’t think it ever will, in the way that LA did, and still does, when I visit.

The hurricane hunters earned their pay with Felix:

NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft N42RF experienced a truly awesome and terrifying mission into the heart of Hurricane Felix last night. Flying at 10,000 feet through Felix at 7pm EDT last night, N42RF dropped a sonde into the southeast eyewall. The swirling winds of the storm were so powerful that the sonde spun a full 3/4 circle around the eye before splashing into the northwest eyewall. It is VERY rare for a sonde to make nearly a complete circle around the eye like this. As the plane entered the eye of the now Category 5 hurricane, they found a 17-mile wide stadium lit up by intense lightning on all sides. The pressure at the bottom of the eye had hit 934 mb, and the temperature outside, a balmy 77 degrees at 10,000 feet. This is about 24 degrees warmer than the atmosphere normally is at that altitude, and a phenomenally warm eye for a hurricane. N42RF then punched into the northwest eyewall. Flight level winds hit 175 mph, and small hail lashed the airplane as lighting continued to flash. Then, the crew hit what Hurricane Hunters fear most–a powerful updraft followed a few seconds later by an equally powerful downdraft. The resulting extreme turbulence and wind shear likely made the aircraft impossible to control. Four G’s of acceleration battered the airplane, pushing the aircraft close to its design limit of 6 G’s. Although no one was injured and no obvious damage to the airplane occurred, the aircraft commander wisely aborted the mission and N42RF returned safely to St. Croix. N42RF is the same aircraft that survived a pounding of 5.6 g’s in the eyewall of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

And that low developing off of Florida’s east coast is starting to make me a little nervous, and eyeing the shutters.