Hurricane humor

The great thing about attending weather conferences is that you never know what you might learn from the new people you meet. At the annual conference of the American Meteorological Society last month, I had the opportunity to interview a number of candidates for a job opening at wunderground.com, and learned something interesting about Hurricane Katrina I didn't know. (By the way, if you're a skilled C language programmer with a background in meteorology, we're looking to hire!.) The student I interviewed, Chris Smith, attended college in Daytona Beach. He said that during the week following Hurricane Katrina's devastation, beer retailers in the Daytona Beach area were stuck with a huge shipment of beer that was intended for the normally very busy Labor Day weekend period in New Orleans. With no place for the beer to go, local retailers offered steep discounts, and some enterprising college students stocked up big-time. Chris' friend Joe Funkhouser can be seen below posing on his "beer throne" of half-price Katrina beer.


Figure 1. A "beer throne" contructed out of half-price beer on sale because it couldn't make it to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

National Weather Service to give hurricanes full names

The Onion, the Internet's premier humor newspaper, announced today that hurricanes will now be given a last name in addition to a first name. So, instead of plain old boring "Alberto" for the year's first storm, we'll have "Alberto Fergus." No word on what the last names of Greek storms Alpha, Beta, and so on will be. Alpha Male? Beta Max?

Jeff Masters