Contest Update

OK. Here is the midnight update on how we are doing with the contest. Hanna continues to make her way toward the coast. Who's winning? So far, it's still up in the air. We'll find out more as the night progresses. Here are the current graphics depicting our landfall locations:


Charleston Map:
Wilmington Map:Wilmington Long Range:

No Upgrade

The 11:00 PM NHC advisory is in. No upgrade. We have a 70 mph Tropical Storm Hanna. She has a pressure of 978 mb. Wow! That is a LOW pressure for a Tropical Storm. They still have her moving north. She is moving more north now than she was earlier. Stand by for an update on the landfall contest.

The Contest is ON!

So dad and I were talking earlier tonight about the track and movement of Hanna. I was explaining to him that it was moving slightly west of due north, and further west than thought. I also told him that a couple of days ago, on my Facebook profile, I made a call for a landfall of a Hurricane between McClellanville and Georgetown. Dad is going with the NHC forecast of a SC/NC border or Brunswick County, NC landfall as a Tropical Storm.


We'll see. Here is a graphic of our thoughts and the current (as of this posting) center location:

More Radars

Want to track "Hurricane" Hanna through the Carolinas and beyond? Here are some local and long range radars that you can do that with. First I will post "Static Image" radars, then below them will be the animated radars. The long range only has animated available. I will post it at the top.

Click on the picture to get a larger image.

As Hanna moves north, I will post radars farther up the coast so her progress can be watched.

But for now...

Here's Hanna:

Wilmington Long Range Animated:

Inland Radars:

Robbins AFB, GA:

Static:

Animated:

Greer, SC:

Static:

Animated:


Columbia, SC:

Static:

Animated:


Raleigh/Durham, NC:

Static:

Animated:


Blacksburg, VA:

Static:
Animated:

Coastal Radars:

Charleston, SC:

Static:
Animated:

Wilmington, NC:

Static:

Animated:


Newport/Morehead, NC:

Static:
Animated:

Wakefield, VA:

Static:
Animated:

Hunters find a Hurricane

And just in time to MISS the 8:00 PM Advisory.

The Hurricane Hunters flying around in Hanna found a maximum surface sustained wind of 65 kts, which converts to 77.1 mph. This makes Hanna a Category 1 Hurricane. She will either be officially upgraded at the 11:00 PM advisory, or the NHC MIGHT issue a special advisory based on these findings. We will see.

Hanna in the Area

Here is a radar capture of Hanna in the Coastal Carolina area. She is currently a 70 MPH Tropical Storm on her way to landfall near the SC/NC border. She may still make it to minimal Category 1 Hurricane status before striking land. For reference, I'm located in Conway, SC, which is located inland up Highway 501 from Myrtle Beach, in Horry County.

An Interesting Musical Mix

Have you ever heard a Mountain Dulcimer and a Saxophone played together?

I thought not.

I hadn't either, until May of 2007 (you guessed it, LEAF).



Expecting to spend the weekend in the tent alone (although with many friends very close by), I didn't expect to be playing as much music as I had hoped.

I ended up sharing the tent with a friend from Charleston (yep, it was Joey).

We were dancing one early afternoon, and had had enough, so we decided it was time to go play some music. We walked up to the tent, and I grabbed my dulcimer. Now very few things in life make me nervous, cute girls being the main culprit. But let me tell you, if you really want to see me melt into a puddle of shivering goo, whip out a saxophone.

That's just what Joey did. I expected him to pull out a drum, but instead, out came this large, brass, windblown contraption that sent fear unknown to man until that moment trembling through my body. It took a few minutes, but we worked up to where we knew where we were with each other key-wise. After figuring that out, I taught him how to play one of my favorite Old-Time tunes, a fun tune called "Sandy Boys." After that, he got me started on a Wild Asparagus tune called "Baghdad Gus," which I'm still working on perfecting to this day.

After a year of playing like this, we've decided it's time to hit the dance halls as a contra dance band. We'll be practicing as much as we can over the coming months, and if things go as we hope, we'll be starting to play dances toward the beginning of 2009, along with another friend of ours.

More on this story as it develops in the future. But I will say this...I'm not longer afraid of a saxophone. As a matter of fact, it's one of my favorite things to play with (along with Bart Saylor's Bouzouki).

See you at a dance hall soon.