Irma . . . Jose?

On this anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, we're taking stock of the aftermath of a disaster of a different sort. 

Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida yesterday, blowing street signs and trees out of the ground, turning pieces of buildings into deadly projectiles, flooding Miami (above), leaving nearly six million people (at last check) in the dark, and rendering the entire state as a wasteland.  And a friend of mine,  a sister of another friend, my maternal cousin, and my paternal uncle and his wife are all in the middle of it. 

And Irma isn't done yet.  It's moving into the Atlanta area and the South Central states, and it will likely bring more misery.  And even with all that, there is still . . . 

. . . Hurricane Jose.

Jose formed on September 5 and is currently looping around in the warm waters of the North Atlantic Ocean just east of the Bahamas.  It won't be a threat to anyone for at least a week, but by next weekend things may change.  Jose will start to move northward, and while it may go out to sea, computer projections from the Global Forecast System and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts - the so-called GFS and Euro models, respectively - show it moving north close to the U.S. East Coast and possibly, sometime during the middle of next week,  hitting the Canadian Maritimes, hitting New England, or . . . making a direct hit on New York City or on Washington, D.C. via the Chesapeake Bay.

Here we go again!

One GFS model run even showed Jose making a hard-left turn, in the manner of Sandy, into southern New Jersey and moving westward toward Baltimore.  And all of these models show Jose's central pressure anywhere between 935 and 955 millibars - which would indicate a more powerful storm than Sandy was.

How much more powerful?  I don't let myself think about it.

To be honest, no one knows what's going to happen with Jose.  New Jersey weather blogger Jonathan Carr notes that the storm could fall apart while it goes around in a circle near the Bahamas and get taken out by trade winds to the northeast or remain intact and still stay out at sea.  But a hit on the Northeast or on southeastern Canada is also possible.  We'll just have to wait.

So, I have to repeat the same spiel I offered here this time last week, albeit with changes of dates.  I may end up blogging less frequently in the days leading up to wherever this hurricane is going. And if it turns out that the storm is zeroing in on New Jersey, I will be putting this blog on hiatus and shutting down my Music Video Of the Week page temporarily, because while I may be able to post a new video on September 15, I may not get to post one on September 22 if the power goes out just before then and stays out for some time to come.  My beautiful-women picture blog - front-loaded with posts scheduled to publish automatically all the way to the end of October - will continue, with or without me. 

It wouldn't surprise me if Jose hit my area of the country.  First Harvey hits Texas, then Irma hits Florida . . . the Northeast would logically be next.  It's as if America, so long a country dedicated to plundering the environment and denying climate science, is suddenly being punished by God, with God's bratty kid sister, Mother Nature, dishing out the punishment.  Twenty seventeen has been a tough year for  this country, with hurricanes on the coast and wildfires in the West.  And even if Jose spares the U.S., worse will almost certainly follow. :-(