This post has been pressing for the last few days. Of course so was the track of Hurricane Irene. Still not sure if I'm ready to proceed, but I would like to capture some of the conditions swirling around this situation. A giant storm like Irene is physically a dynamic interaction of air and water that moves heat from the tropical surface waters both into the stratosphere and into higher latitudes. A summer builds up an imbalance of heat with concentrations of warm water and a strong gradient that reaches off towards the pole. The Earth's rotation, and the twisting effects this has on air flow, imparts a turning moment to storm cells in the Trade Wind zones and these spinning tops are set loose to careen across the table of an ocean basin. On the east coast of North America, that involves the Caribbean and the Gulf Stream, the oscillations of the Jet Stream, and interactions with the Bermuda/Azores High, along with whatever fronts happen to be moving across from the west coast.