A good way to spend a spell of free time or an educational way to diminish shareholder value at your place of work is on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website www.noaa.gov.  This is the product of a super secret government project cross breeding meteorologists with spies.  Evidently, 007 has quite a thing for weather gals as this is a fairly sizeable group of civil servants ferociously battling the weather to keep the US safe from storm cells.  In all seriousness, we spend a considerable amount of time extracting data from NOAA to add as criteria for the weather sensitive business sectors.   There simply is no better source on the planet for information related to any query regarding anything from the depths of the ocean to the edges of the atmosphere.  These sleuth scientists have access to spy satellites orbiting the globe, data gathering buoys deployed in water thousands of feet deep and computers that now make Cray Computers look a bit more like the mighty Commodore Computer of 1982.   Any surfer, windsurfer, yacht owner, cargo ship captain, and for that matter anyone who lives in tornado prone areas or any data on the weather most likely originated from one of the thousands of information gathering installations monitored by NOAA.  It is very interesting to track a Hurricane which can form as a storm off the coast of Northern Africa fed by the dangerously nurturing Atlantic as it follows the trade winds west.  As it begins to spin its way across the ocean and becomes a Tropical Storm a name is attached such as the 2010 names which are, Alex Bonnie Colin Danielle Earl Fiona Gaston Hermine Igor Julia Karl Lisa Matthew Nicole Otto Paula Richard Shary Tomas Virginie and Walter.  This is common knowledge, but NOAA is predicting the worst hurricane season since 2005 with the possibility of 14-23 named storms with 8-14 reaching 74 MPH official hurricane status and 3-7 Category 3-5 hurricanes with sustained wind speeds of a staggering minimum of 111 MPH and a maximum of 200mph although up to 235 mph was recorded on the edge of the eye in combination with a rare tornado therein.  If we revisit the hurricane season of 2005, the numbers are staggering with Katrina setting records for most financial damage, loss of life, storm surge and a regular litany of other categories.  Now we certainly are not the biggest storm watchers in the world and the prediction of a relatively quiet Pacific Hurricane season creates less interest as this denotes less short range south swells generating surf.  However, as hurricanes have the potential to affect everything from the price of oil to the price of Indian River Grapefruits, we take interest in hurricanes.  It is unclear whether the clandestine operatives over at NOAA are trying to create job security as Congress is looking to cut the government fat.  As it is essential to our Country’s sovereign status that Congress person’s travel everywhere on Leer jets, jobs that monitor potential “Acts of God” such as hurricane Katrina are clearly of little to no value for the well being of the US.  The question then rises if entropy and chaos theory along with potential changes in the salinity of the world’s oceans may be changing temperature variables.  The increased melting of glaciers evidently slows the flow of the heaviest water which travels along the deepest recesses of the Ocean floors and is responsible for the currents such as the Gulf Stream.  This in turn causes the Gulf Stream to alter its course to such a degree that hurricanes tend to track straight into the Gulf of Mexico where they reform into larger storms after tearing through the Caribbean Islands.  Usually the storms spin harmlessly into the Northern Atlantic where the cold water causes them to lose power. 

We’d like to end on a positive note that in a not so surprising turn of events, President Obama increased the number of extraordinarily wealthy and powerful palm greasers of Capitol Hill by halting some 33 deep water drilling rigs either operational or in the works.  This was oddly positioned the day after the above information was released by the NOAA so we wonder if our esteemed leader was concerned a hurricane might create a copy cat disaster bringing political pressure on him for not taking action?  Either way kudos for less tar balls on the feet of Gulf residents though Obama certainly is creating quite a list or very powerful companies and individuals alike he is aggressively alienating.  We surmise this is his idea of redistribution of the wealth, by making it a bit more difficult for the rich to get richer?