Ok. I love poker. I have a poker blog that I never update, usually because I’m too busy playing to write on it. I even really like online poker play, even though it’s full of idiots making idiot plays that brutally suck away your cash. I never play anything other than uber-small stakes online, and never keep more than a couple hundred bucks there.

Tonight, I finally hit the mother-lode, the awesomest of awesome pokerness while playing a .05/.10 No Limit Hold ‘Em game.

Here’s the link to the hand history on my KnoxPoker.com message board. Here’s the screen capture of the hand:

Even if it’s not for much cash, a Royal Flush sure is sweet.

Saw the Shuttle & ISS! Wow! That was cool!

A special 8:35 pm Eastern update from the NHC:

DATA FROM THE AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT CURRENTLY
INVESTIGATING HURRICANE DEAN INDICATE THAT MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS
HAVE INCREASED TO 160 MPH…MAKING DEAN A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC
CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE.

At least we can stop saying that Dean is expected to reach Category 5 in the next 24 hours …

Hurricane Dean is upgraded to a Category 5 storm — capable of inflicting catastrophic damage when it makes landfall early Tuesday.

Visit CNN for the latest.

In Nashville, not Greece. :) If my calculations are correct, the Shuttle and ISS should appear to go right over it from this angle.

As of 8:00 PM, Dean’s maximum sustained winds are now at 155 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. That puts him 1 mph short of Category 5. Minimum central pressure is 915 mb.

I know I said I’d be blogging Dean’s approach to the Yucatan tonight, but then it occurred to me: I have a free night in Nashville, courtesy of the great state of Tennessee. Is sitting in my room, watching The Weather Channel and surfing the Internet, really the best way to spend my time? I think not. I’m a weather nerd, but I’m not that much of a weather nerd. :) I’m in Nashville; I ought to go out and do something… Nashville-ish. So I’m going to head over to the Parthenon and try to get a photo of the Shuttle and ISS flying over it. Then I think I’ll sample a bit of Nashville’s legendary nightlife. Don’t worry, Becky: I won’t stay out too late, or drink too much. :) I have a seminar to attend in the morning, after all. But I could deal with a little bit of honky-tonk tonight!

Anyway, further updates on Dean will most likely be via cell phone, or by guestbloggers, at least till I get back to the hotel.

As I looked for some different views on Hurricane Dean, I saw Eric Berger’s post asking “Has Hurricane Dean been overhyped?” I think it is a very interesting question because I started to wonder that myself from all the news stories I have seen… One of the stories I saw made the comment about “Dean heading straight for Cancun!” Really? To me the forecast track looks considerably to the south of both Cancun and Cozumel. Also Eric, highlights in his post this concern from Texas Lt. Gov David Dewhurst because two models still bring Dean into the state. He points out that these two models, the CLP5 and the LBAR, do not have the track record and in fact the CLP5 is not really a model.

In my opinion, as I see all the stories, reports, watch cable news where CNN has the edge of the screen showing the recent NHC report on Dean and the satellite image there. The promos on FOX News on how they are “Your Official source on Hurricane Dean.” So I asked myself, What would the coverage be like if Dean was actually going to HIT the United States. If this is the standard set for all Hurricanes the rest of the season, it will definitely be interesting.

I also have to ask, does Dean want to be a Category 5? I mean how many days are we going to report, “Dean is forecasted to become a category 5 in the next 24 to 36 hours.” Like I mentioned on my Weather Blog, I understand why we all forecast Dean to reach Category 5 strength, all the conditions are favorable for category 5 strength. It just doesn’t seem like Dean wants to take advantage of it. I am still going to agree with the current forecast, I just won’t be surprised if it stays a category 4.

Over at Dr. Jeff Master’s blog, it looks like he too is watching the potential proto-Felix.

An area of disturbed weather associated with a tropical wave a few hundred miles northeast of the Lesser Antilles Islands, “Invest 92L”, has changed little in organization today. Wind shear is about 5-10 knots in this region, and an upper-level anticyclone has formed over 92L. This is a very favorable environment for intensification, should 92L start to get organized. The disturbance has the potential to develop into a tropical depression by Wednesday. It is moving west to west-northwest at 15-20 mph, and will be near the central Bahamas by Wednesday, and the east coast of Florida by Friday. It does not appear that any troughs strong enough to recurve 92L will swing by until Saturday at the earliest.

Brendan, hope your seminar is going well

A few minutes after I posted my last update, the recon plane sent a new report indicating flight-level winds of 174 mph. According to the standard 90% formula, that translates to 156 mph winds at the surface — literally the very minimum for Category 5 status. But the NHC has decided to continue classifying Dean as a 150 mph Cat. 4 for now. The discussion explains that they’re having trouble getting all the data from the recon plane, and meanwhile other available data suggests a slightly lower intensity:

COMMUNICATIONS PROBLEMS ARE PREVENTING THE RECEIPT OF MOST DATA FROM THE AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT THIS AFTERNOON…ALTHOUGH A [3:30 PM EDT] VORTEX FIX WAS RECEIVED. AT THAT TIME THE MINIMUM PRESSURE WAS 918 MB…WITH MAXIMUM FLIGHT-LEVEL WINDS OF 151 KT [174 MPH]. EARLIER IN THE FLIGHT…A PEAK SFMR [SURFACE] WIND OF [141 MPH] WAS OBSERVED. DVORAK CLASSIFICATIONS FROM TAFB AND SAB WERE [146 MPH] KT AT [2:00 PM EDT]. BASED ON THESE DATA…THE INITIAL INTENSITY IS HELD AT [150 MPH].

Okay, back to work! (These 15-minute breaks between seminar lectures are great for hurricane-blogging. :)

The most recent recon plane to investigate Dean found a pressure of 924 mb — down just 2 mb from the wee hours of this morning — and top flight-level winds of 161 mph, down from 167 mph this morning. (Multiply by 0.9 for the approximate top surface winds.) As a result, the NHC kept Dean at 150 mph as of the 2:00 PM advisory. So it appears this storm is in no huge hurry to begin rapidly intensifying, my earlier post notwithstanding.

That said, he’s looking better and better organized on the satellite loop, so I still think it’s only a matter of time before he achieves Cat. 5 status:

The next recon mission is set for 8:00 PM EDT. And my break is almost over. Back to the seminar…

NFL star Michael Vick will plead guilty to federal conspiracy charges involving illegal dogfighting, one of his attorneys confirms to CNN.

Visit CNN for the latest.

The space shuttle Endeavour will be visible tonight from much of the United States, as the shuttle prepares for landing Tuesday afternoon at the Kennedy Space Center. This is a somewhat rare opportunity, in part because the shuttle spends most of its time in orbit docked to the Space Station, and in part because the orbital alignment needs to be right for bringing the shuttle overhead shortly after sunset or before sunrise. But these conditions are met tonight - the two are presently undocked, so they can be seen separately as bright stars moving across the night sky; and the orbital alignment is bringing these objects over the United States shortly after sunset.

To get the exact time (and place in the sky) for your location, try orbital predictions at Heavens Above. Choose your geographic location, then click on 10-day predictions for ISS (space station), and look for a pass on the evening of the 20th (tonight). Shuttle and station will follow the same track across the sky, probably within 1 minute of each other. Both objects will be similar in brightness to Jupiter or Venus - meaning they’ll be easily visible to the unaided eye, even from the middle of a big city. The visiblity will be short, however, usually about two minutes total duration. I don’t know for sure which is which - I’ve seen conflicting reports about which object is leading at the moment.

For some locations of likely reader interest: From South Bend, IN they will rise in the NW, be directly overhead at 9:30, set in the SE. From Nashville, TN they will rise in the NW, max elevation 33 degrees high in the NE sky above Cassiopeia at 8:30 pm, and go into the shadow in the east. Note these are really at the same time - these locations are in different time zones, but the shuttle is visible over much of the country as it goes over tonight.

From the NHC’s 11 am discussion,

THE NEXT RECONNAISSANCE FLIGHT WILL BE AT 18Z THIS AFTERNOON. IN THE MEANTIME… RECENT MICROWAVE DATA SHOW A SINGLE EYEWALL THAT HAS BECOME BETTER DEFINED WITH COLDER TOPS IN CONVENTIONAL SATELLITE IMAGERY OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF HOURS. THE ADVISORY INTENSITY WILL BE HELD AT 130 KT…BUT LATEST SATELLITE IMAGES INDICATE THAT DEAN IS APPROACHING CATEGORY FIVE STATUS…AND IT IS EXPECTED REACH THAT THRESHOLD LATER TODAY OVER THE DEEP WARM WATERS OF THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN.

The advisory gives a central pressure of 925 mb, sustained winds at 150 mph. Landfall on the Yucatan is expected very early Tuesday morning, but conditions will be deteriorating today as the storm approaches. Hurricane warnings are in effect in Mexico and Belize from Cancun south to the Belize/Guatamala border, and also on the west coast of the Yucatan from south of Progresso to Ciudad del Carmen.

At 11am, NHC says microwave imagery shows a single eyewall, better organization. Dean may already be a Category 5, but NHC is holding off till next recon flight confirms it. … I'm at a rest stop
east of Nashville. Hence the photo.

FYI - I’m heading to Nashville in the morning for a two-day State of Tennessee law-clerk seminar thingy, so blogging will be extremely sporadic tomorrow and Tuesday, I’m afraid. The timing sucks, as tomorrow will probably be one of those exciting days for a weatherblogger, filled with amazing and terrifying images of a rapidly intensifying Category 5 hurricane… but what can ya do? Duty calls. At least I should be able to blog from my hotel room tomorrow night as Dean approaches the Yucatan. And I’ve again asked my hurricane guestbloggers to help fill in when I’m indisposed. (Speaking of which, thanks, Brian, for your help today!)

Anyway, Dean has now officially cleared the western tip of Jamaica. It never actually made landfall; according to the 11:00 PM discussion, the closest approach occurred when the center of the eye “came within about [23 miles] of Portland Point of the south-central coast.” Tomorrow, we’ll start to find out what kind of damage Dean did. Hopefully it wasn’t too severe, though I’m sure it wasn’t a cakewalk on the island, especially the south shore.

The downside of Dean’s eye failing to hit land is that it didn’t weaken over said land. So now the conditions are ripe for some potentially historic intensification tomorrow. That Dean will become a Category 5 hurricane tomorrow is, I think, almost a foregone conclusion, given the favorable atmospheric conditions, the lack of land interaction, and the extremely warm water:

The brown line is Dean’s approximate track so far; the black line is the approximate forecast track.

The heat potential isn’t quite as high as it would be if Dean were trekking a bit further north, but even so, it’s plenty warm enough to support rapid intensification; indeed, it’s significantly warmer than the water (between the two small black vertical lines near the lower right-hand corner of the map above) in which Dean exploded from a low-end Cat. 2 into a high-end Cat. 4 on Friday. And because of his failure to make landfall in Jamaica, Dean starts his trek into these bathtub-like Western Caribbean waters with a top wind speed of 145 mph and a minimum pressure of 925 millibars. So the question, I think, is not whether he’ll strengthen into a Cat. 5; the question is, how low can he go? Pressure-wise, that is. Gilbert, following a similar track 19 years ago, held the Atlantic-basin record (888 mb) until Wilma surpassed it in 2005 with a mark of 882 mb. Can Dean rival these numbers? I’m not predicting it, but I certainly don’t think it’s out of the question. He dropped 46 millibars in 24 hours on Friday, where the heat potential was, on paper, not even quite high enough to support rapid deepening. Another 46-millibar drop tomorrow, in these far more conducive waters, would break Wilma’s record by 3. I’m just sayin’.

Can anything hold Dean back? Maybe another eyewall replacement cycle… but you’d think that wouldn’t happen for a while, now that the lengthy cycle which continued throughout Dean’s approach and passage of Jamaica is finally over. We’ll see.

In any event, the good news is that Dean now appears to be headed for an area of the Yucatan Peninsula that’s much more sparsely populated than the Cancun/Cozumel area. Hopefully the people who do live along the targeted coast are taking the proper precautions and getting themselves out of harm’s way, because regardless of whether Dean approaches any meteorological records, the bottom line is that they are going to be hit very hard.

Anyway, here’s what the 11:00 PM discussion has to say about Dean’s track and intensity:

DEAN IS HEADING TOWARD 280 DEGREES [i.e., just north of due west] AT ABOUT [20 MPH] WITH STEERING PROVIDED BY A STRENGTHENING MID-LEVEL RIDGE OVER THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES. THE MODELS ALL AGREE THAT THE RIDGE WILL GET EVEN STRONGER AND MOVE A LITTLE WESTWARD WITH DEAN…MEANING THAT DEAN WILL PROBABLY MOVE IN A RATHER STRAIGHT LINE UNTIL FINAL LANDFALL IN MEXICO. OVERALL THE MODELS HAVE AGAIN EDGED A LITTLE SOUTHWARD…AND SO HAS THE OFFICIAL FORECAST. …

ALL OF THE OBJECTIVE GUIDANCE CALLS FOR STRENGTHENING IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN WHERE THE SHEAR WILL REMAIN WEAK AND THE OCEAN HEAT CONTENT VERY HIGH. THE OFFICIAL FORECAST FOLLOWS SUIT AND INDICATES THAT DEAN COULD REACH CATEGORY FIVE STATUS DURING THE NEXT DAY OR SO. THE HURRICANE WILL WEAKEN WHILE OVER YUCATAN IN PROPORTION TO JUST HOW LONG IT SPENDS OVER LAND. THE OPPORTUNITY FOR RESTRENGTHENING OVER THE SOUTHWESTERN GULF LIKEWISE DEPENDS ON THE EXACT TRACK…AND THAT WINDOW HAS BEEN SHORTENING WITH THE SOUTHWARD SHIFTS IN TRACK. ALTHOUGH NOT EXPLICITLY INDICATED IN THE NEW OFFICIAL FORECAST…IT IS STILL POSSIBLE THAT DEAN COULD RESTRENGTHEN AND AGAIN REACH MAJOR HURRICANE STATUS PRIOR TO FINAL LANDFALL ALONG THE COAST OF MAINLAND MEXICO.

P.S. In other tropical news, Brian Neudorff notes a tropical storm over Oklahoma — well, the remnants of Erin, anyway, looking mighty spiral-y! — and a potential proto-Felix.

UPDATE, 2:00 AM: Dean’s pressure went up a millibar, to 926… but its top wind speed is up too, to 150 mph.

UPDATE, 7:13 AM: Another eyewall replacement cycle already?? According to the 5am discussion, “OBSERVATIONS FROM THE LAST AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER MISSION AGAIN INDICATED A CONCENTRIC EYEWALL STRUCTURE.”