The Perfection of Hermine

When I was in elementary school we'd have movie days. It was fun because the teacher would turn out the lights, so we could cut up a little more, but when they wheeled the big projector out we pretty much got quiet. I remember several times they'd show airplanes outfitted with spray nozzles on the wings, and they were spraying silver iodide to "seed" clouds to make it rain. They'd have the typical "movie reel" announcer with the exaggerated voice describing the whole thing in great detail. Not only were they candid about it, they were quite proud of it.
 What was the term for that? That's right..."weather modification." These days it'd probably be called "geoengineering." Before airplanes they shot silver iodide into the air via cannons. It simply got better with technology. Is anyone truly so naive as to think they'd just up and quit? Ask any general that if the sky were the limit, as it were, what would be the most powerful weapon in existence, and they'll say weather. They have the money. We know that. Technology? They have that too. We know that technology is ahead of what the public knows. Otherwise they'd never be able to come up with new-and-improved stuff. The question is, how far ahead is it? Estimates range from only a few years or maybe a decade ahead, to 40-50 years, which most estimates I've read say, up to centuries or more. Even ten years ahead; considering it's exponential, would be hard for most people to fathom.
 Right now I just don't know what to say about the situation in Texas. It has me speechless and sad. All I can say is hurricanes can make landfall and return to the ocean and strengthen and hit land again, but for ANY storm to just hover in place for days is something completely new. TWC tried to explain it away by saying "Oh, well...there's no jet stream to push it along." Bullshit. ANYTHING rotating has natural forward momentum and it's NOT going to want to stay in place, unless there are extremely powerful forces acting upon it, and from all directions. Same with the "Rain Blob" that parked itself over Louisiana last year. Have you ever seen anything like that in your life? Ask your grandpa. Has he? I doubt it. I'm too choked up about Harvey right now but it did remind me of Hermine.  It started in the Gulf; crossed Florida and then went up the East Coast to Canada.
 You may recall that Hermine happened during the middle of the off-season. For such a large storm that was unusual enough, but what was more so is the way it perfectly hugged the East Coast after it crossed Florida. At no time did it ever venture more than about fifty miles inland, where it would have lost energy. It traced the coastline like a draftsman. If you had put a dot right in the middle of the eye as soon as it crossed Florida, it would have traced the outline of the coast almost perfectly. It had been predicted to make landfall at several points along the way; even in revised forecasts, but it never did. I remember at least three times the weather guys going "Oh...it's just made an unexpected turn to the right." By the third time I was ready for it. If it had gone inland at almost any point during its journey the damage would've been lessened dramatically, but as it was you couldn't possibly have asked for more damage from that storm.
 I guess it was the third day of the storm and it was about to finally leave the US. I was in a CVS or somewhere waiting on something. They had TVs behind the counter with TWC on. There was this guy standing next to me and we were both standing there quietly watching the storm. They were showing a time-lapse video of Hermine's path over the last several days, and we were watching it trace the coastline as if it had eyes. I could tell he was lost in thought. Finally he spoke up. "You know," he said, "It looks just like they're controlling it with a joystick." "They are" I said as I paid for the package and left. He looked at me ponderously; not as some crazy guy. "Have a good one, bud." He wasn't some "conspiracy theorist." He was John Q. Public. Very astute observation there, John Q.