It figures. The Curmudgeon family is headed to New York City this weekend for a show and some touristing about, but it looks like Hurricane Irene may follow us up there, Landstrike style. Irene probably won't be "the big one," and it's course is still far from certain, but we guess it would be poetic justice for the storm to ruin our weekend. (Having just survived the great Virginia Quake of '11).
The forecast track for Irene is already illustrating one of the big problems with hurricane forecasting that we tried to highlight in Landstrike: given the curvature of the Atlantic coastline and the tendency of Atlantic hurricanes to curve to the north as they approach the coast, it is very difficult to accurately predict where they'll strike (or if they will miss entirely).
In the worst case, Irene will hug the coast from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod, causing billions of dollars of coastal damage (similar to Hurricane Floyd in 1999).
If you live anywhere on the east coast north of Georgia, you should keep a close eye on this one for the next few days!
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