The ABC has a nice story about an elementary school student: Eureka moment for Fox in the henhouse

A year five student who made a discovery about a new kind of link between protein and eggs was among those honoured at last night’s Eureka Prize ceremony for excellence in science.

Inspiration can come from unexpected places, and for Ignatius Fox it came when his chickens suddenly laid bigger eggs after breaking into the worm farm.

“So we thought that the worms would give protein to them so we tried giving protein to give the big eggs and it worked,” Ignatius said.
…

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, who presented the award, thinks the student’s insight puts him ahead of many adults.

“So we’ve got an 11-year-old person who’s made an observation, accidental observation, then formed a hypothesis and then tested it out as opposed to certain radio jocks who’ll say, gee, it was warm now and it’s colder tonight, therefore there’s no such thing as global warming,” he said.

This is the scientific method in action – ask the question, formulate an answer, devise a test for your answer. That’s what many US states don’t want schools to teach anymore because it’s ‘controversial’.

[BTW, the headlines at ABC can be better than the stories. Humor, for a given meaning of humor, is not discouraged.]

Position: 25.9N 48.3W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [300°] near 9 mph [15 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 75 mph [120 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1002 mb ↓.

Currently about 1085 miles [1745 km] East-Northeast of the northern Leeward Islands.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 30.3N 91.2W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [320°] near 6 mph [ 9 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 75 mph [120 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 175 Miles [280 km].
Minimum central pressure: 980 mb ↑.

Currently about 70 miles [110 km] West-Northwest of New Orleans.
Currently about 15 miles [ 25 km] South of Baton Rouge.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect from Cameron, Louisiana to the Alabama-Florida border.

Update 1AM CDT: The eye is over water and it has stalled out. This is not good news for anyone as it prolongs the agony, increases the rainfall, and increases the surge.

Update 7AM CDT: After moving about 40 miles [65 km] early this morning, it has stalled again.

Update 2PM CDT: Downgraded to a Tropical Storm.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

It wasn’t the storm, it was the levees.

It wasn’t Nature, it was man.

The Weather Underground’s Hurricane Katrina tracking map.

An animation of the National Hurricane Center’s tracking maps. If you stop the animation and step to frame 13 you will see that they had Katrina coming to my house for a while.

The track on Google map from the Central Florida Hurricane Center so you can see exactly where the storm struck, and it wasn’t New Orleans.

Katrina did have top sustained winds of 175 mph with a pressure of 902 millibars, a Category 5 storm, but that was in the central Gulf of Mexico. It came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane to the East of New Orleans. There was minimal wind damage in the city from the hurricane.

Wikipedia has a nice article on Katrina, without going totally technical on the science behind hurricanes.