The Greyhound bus to NYC is packed — I think every seat is filled — on this Labor Day. This makes me realize that I’m taking part in one of the great American ritual migrations: home to family for the holiday weekend, then back to the city where I work.

The NHC predicts Fabian will stay “well off the southeast U.S. coast,” but adds, “It is still too soon to rule out some impact of Fabian from the mid-Atlantic states northward.” Meanwhile, I’m en route to NYC now. Here is my dad, seeing me off.

I’m about to leave Newington and head for NYC via Greyhound bus. In other news, Fabian was just upgraded to 145 mph … and the Red Sox beat the Phillies on a Grand Slam in the ninth inning!

Last season, it took a long time for the East Coast-centered college-football world to notice the USC Trojans. Indeed, despite an impressive run all year, it wasn’t until the Trojans’ final regular-season game — a dominating 44-13 win over media darling Notre Dame — that people all over the country suddenly started ranking USC among the nation’s elite.

Well, this year is quite a bit different. After the Trojans’ crushing shutout at the home stadium of previously #6-ranked Auburn, USC has jumped from #8 to #4 in the latest AP poll — leapfrogging ahead of Michigan, Texas, and Kansas State. The Trojans even got six first-place votes. Fight on!

The Trojans’ head coach also has the vote of the ESPN Power Rankings writers for something else: “Pete Carroll for California governor. He revived USC. . .he can do the same for California.” Heh.

Meanwhile, ESPN’s Trev Albert says, “USC showed that it has a defense on par with [#1-ranked] Oklahoma’s stellar unit” and predicts, “Southern California will win the [Pac-10] conference because of that defense.” The conference? That’s just for starters, Trev. How about we pit the nation’s top defenses, the Trojans and the Sooners, against each other in a head-to-head battle? How does January 4 in New Orleans, Louisiana sound? :)

Oh, and I’ve got one more ESPN.com link for you. Check out this column by Ivan Maisel. Scroll down, down, down, to the very bottom, and check out the chart of the nation’s longest Divison I-A winning streaks. At the top of the list, of course, is defending national champion Ohio State, with 15 in a row. In third is USC, with 9 straight. But look who’s seventh on the list: UConn, with 5 consecutive wins! Way to go, Huskies!

Did I say one more ESPN.com link? Okay, I lied, I got another one. I know I have a few readers with University at Buffalo ties, so I can’t resist pointing y’all to the ESPN Bottom 10. Guess who’s got the “top” spot? Hehe…

The reconaissance aircraft this morning confirmed that Fabian’s top sustained wind speed is around 140 miles per hour, so it remains a Category 4 hurricane at this hour.

It is forecast to remain at roughly its present strength for the next few days. The Hurricane Center says: “The atmospheric and oceanic environment should remain favorable for the maintenance of a strong hurricane over the next couple of days…so changes in strength will probably be due to inner core processes such as eyewall replacements. At present there are no indications of an outer eyewall that would temporarily result in weakening.”

The latest computer model guidance seems even more “clustered” than yesterday around a hard right-hand turn, so the U.S. East Coast seems less and less at risk:

As the holiday weekend ends and the work week begins, I probably won’t be able to provide as many updates on Fabian, but you can always go to the National Hurricane Center homepage or the Weather Underground tropical section for the very latest.

UPDATE: Here is a graphic of the Hurricane Center’s official forecast. The black line is the actual forecast track; the white area is the “potential track area” — in other words, the margin of error. But as you can see, the actual track they are predicting would take the hurricane between North Carolina and Bermuda, and straight out to sea.

Hurricane Fabian was officially classified as a Category 4 hurricane today at 5:00 PM Eastern time. The monster storm may now be approaching Category 5 intensity — or it may have already achieved it, and then perhaps weakened a bit. It’s hard to say for sure. Officially, Fabian remains a Cat. 4, with 140 mile-per-hour winds, as of 11:00 PM.

According to the National Hurricane Center’s meteorological discussion, the most recent intensity estimates from various satellite-based estimation formulas put Fabian at somewhere between 145 mph and 160 mph. (Category Five, the highest category on the Saffir-Simpson scale, is 156 mph and up.)

But the Hurricane Center is keeping Fabian at 140 mph for now, saying “cloud tops have also warmed during the past couple of hours…and the convection to the northeast has eroded somewhat.” I also suspect, again, that there may be some political caution at work: the NHC is generally extremely reluctant to call a hurricane Category Five without hard data. For instance, I’m convinced that Hurricane Edouard in 1996 reached Category Five intensity over the open ocean, but it was never upgraded because it was too far east to send a reconaissance plane out, and by the time the planes got to it, it had weakened. (The same may prove to be the case here, if Fabian indeed reached 160 mph earlier today and has now weakened a bit.)

Anyway, the first Air Force recon plane is on its way out there now, so by the 5:00 AM advisory, we’ll have a better idea of Fabian’s true strength. As the Hurricane Center says with classic understatement, “Air Force recon…should provide some rather interesting intensity data.”

In the mean time, we can continue to marvel at the storm’s beauty — and its power. These enormously powerful hurricanes are incredible machines, to the point that they create their own environment and can even, in a sense, begin to consume themselves. If Fabian is weakening now, the cause is probably “eyewall collapse,” which invariably happens with these huge storms: the storm’s inner core gets so tightly wound that it begins to collapse in on itself, temporarily weakening the storm while a new eyewall forms. It’s fascinating to observe.

Anyway, stay tuned. In the mean time, here’s an image of Fabian from earlier today:

UPDATE: I wish this was Jim Cantore’s shift on the Weather Channel. I’m sure his eyes would be practically bugging out of his head marveling at this storm. :)

Anyway, here is the latest map of computer-model forecasts regarding Fabian’s likely track:

If it follows something resembling the red or orange tracks, I expect it will almost certainly miss the East Coast — once hurricanes make that hard right turn, they pretty much always keep turning and head out to sea. On the other hand, if it follows a track that’s more like the yellow, blue, or green paths, everybody from Florida to New England will have to keep an eye (so to speak) on it.