Ernesto and John and Ioke, Oh My!

Here in DC, Ernesto's outmost bands seem to have moved in overnight. It's much cooler than it has been in ages and I expect the rain will be getting steadily worse. Which is fine by me: I plan on staying indoors and getting work done, both on the current book project and in anticipation of the upcoming RWOS paperback book tour. This Labor Day weekend seems the perfect one for it. By contrast, last night I met a group of folks who said they were heading down from D.C. to the Outer Banks today to enjoy a more traditional Labor Day weekend--which means, driving into the heart of Ernesto. Good luck to them, is all I can say. They may be in for an adventure. An interesting question, of course, is whether Ernesto was actually a hurricane at landfall. Pressure dropped all the way down to 988 millibars in one measurement, although maximum sustained winds were never more than 70 mph--at least according to the lastest estimates. But storms are frequently upgraded in post-season analyses; Hurricane Emily of last year, for example, was upgraded from a Cat 4 to a Cat 5. I wouldn't be at all surprised if something similar happened with Ernesto.