sherpa

Isn't going to happen, at least the payout. People do all kinds of funny things on airplanes, and make all kinds of bizarre demands. I once had the wife of a hall of fame QB refuse to sit for takeoff, (and said she wouldn't for landing either), becasue she had cosmetic butt surgery the day before. She said she would stand in the galley. Fortunately, her "demand" was made known at the gate, so it was resolved there.

There are lots of reasons to deny boarding or have someone removed. Airline crews do not administer injections. They do have a few things on board, but if necessary, they find a physician or licensed medical individual to do it, and there is almost always one on board. Wouldn't be done at the gate though. You'd have the passenger removed and handled by airport medical folks, who are available. Passengers do not have the right to limit other passenger's options, but if they state they have a condition at the time of the reservation, if possible, they will be accommodated. This happens more frequently with people who have peanut allergies. This professor now has to face five separate charges. Pretty dumb move.

There weren't any additional airplanes built for Vietnam.

Kemp was a smart guy with a deep concern for racial issues. He would probably think there was a much better strategy to deal with the issue than doing something silly during the national anthem.

Hurricanes go where they do based on atmospheric pressure. They generally follow the trades from Cape Verde or further west until they encounter a stronger jet stream or pressure systems over our continent. We rarely see strong winds aloft in the August time frame south of 30 north latitude, so there is nothing to shear them. They also draw energy from warm water, over 80 degrees. That's why they generally head into the warmer Gulf of Mexico early in the season, and follow the Gulfstream, more or less, later on. Ultimately, they are easily steered by pressure systems aloft, and that's why it's tough to predict them over 72 hours.

Last week I was driving down this curvy road where I live. To my surprise, a bicycle passes me. I'm thinking he is going way too fast for this road, when I notice he looks like a rope driving a bike. Sure enough, a bit later, after a big curve, I notice he has crashed on the side of the road. I survey the accident scene and he does indeed look like a rope. Braids everywhere, twisted and tied onto himself in a messed heap. Strands of fiber here and there. So I asked, "Are you OK?" He answers "No, I'm afraid not,"

A priest a rabbi and Protestant pastor are at a religious retreat held in a wilderness area. After a few drinks, they start bragging about their ability to recruit non believers to their faith. They agree to compete during the week, and meet the next Friday night to judge who was best. Friday night comes and the pastor sees the priest and asks him how he did. The pastor said he did great. He met a bear and read him the first few chapters of a Catholic catechism and stated that the bear agree to receive holy communion the next day. The priest asks the pastor how he did and he tells the story that he also met a bear and relayed to him the story about redemption by faith through grace and that the bear agreed to be baptized the very next day. They wonder where the rabbi is, and at that moment a couple men come in carrying the rabbi on a gurney. His face is slashed and he has numerous broken bones. They ask him what happened. He states that he met a bear also, and stated: "I knew I shouldn't have started with circumcision."

Excellent post. An amazing project. I will be watching.

You can tell the ufo community that the alien who was flying it was LCOL Eric Shultz. A bit of a legend.

Another, more recent, item to share about Groom Lake. A "foreign" airplane crashed there on Sep 7, killing the commanding officer of the squadron that "evaluates" foreign fighters. We have a long history of "acquiring" foreign airplanes through a variety of means and testing them in that area.

I listened to the game and post game on WGR. Not having to listen to the insufferable Rex was win enough.

Key West aviation forecast. Tomorrow: 2AM wind northeast sustained 56 knots gust 70 knots (82mph). 5AM wind northeast sustained 75 gust 95 knots (107mph). 7AM wind north sustained 90 gust 120 knots (138mph). 11AM wind west 75 gust 100 knots (115mph). It will be worse further north.

You may want to throttle back there amigo. I never refuted or argued against anything you said. I simply stated that "if" there was an implication that volcanic ash had anything to do with the location of the phenomena, it was unsupported. Your second paragraph, where you question "where I gleaned," is not comment-able, because it never happened. I'm not here for confrontation, and I cant be baited into it.

I get your point, and I fully agree that there is no evidence that the solar storm to visible aurora to volcano/earthquake (or whatever), sequence has ever been established. But, in your post, if you are implying that the volcano was the source of the northern lights in this instance, I would strongly disagree. The phenomena extended, geographically, way beyond any ash from the volcano. The difference in appearance of any aurora is completely different from anything that is earth atmosphere "pollutant" caused, and the appearance of this particular event preceded and succeeded the volcano. Just an weird observation, but one that is interesting and undeniable, and I've never been able to justify the coincidence.

One potential coincidence does not prove a point. Its just that it was interesting that both things happened at the same time.

I have never found any verifiable connection from solar storms that result in northern lights anything, but there's one thing I've never been able to figure out, and it may be just coincidence. The night the Icelandic volcano erupted in 2010, the one that shutdown European airspace for a week, I was flying from Miami to London. The US to Europe flights are always at night. The various routes used would never be anywhere close to an area where the northern lights are visible. There no air traffic control transmissions once out of range, but there is an air-air frequency that all oceanic airplanes monitor to pass along various bits of information, usually turbulence reports or other flight related information or the killing of Bin Laden, European soccer scores or US sports stuff, cockpit to cockpit. On that evening, everyone was talking about the extent of the northern lights and how no one had ever seen them this far south. Someone commented that there was a significant solar storm three days prior and that must have been the cause. Anyway, halfway there, we get a message from dispatch about the volcano and that the ash cloud necessitated a change in route to a more southerly option. Anyway, the largest northern lights coverage I've ever seen was just prior to and during that volcano.

As I said though, it shouldn't have been that bad picking through the outermost feeder band. The potential for a very serious problem existed though, since if something would have happened on takeoff that required an immediate landing, such as an engine issue or anything that limited climb ability, they would have been in deep kimchi. Would have had to go to an airport in the Dominican Republic. Good options, but they would had to go around the band and then add additional time with an ailing airplane. Not a good option.

Its a bit misleading to see that flightracker screen shot and make a judgement. Those things, along with air traffic control radar show precip, but not in any way as accurately as airplane radar does. So while that outer band looks kind of menacing, airplane radar, which is specifically weather radar, would have presented a completely different picture, and you can tweak the display and work your way around the heavier areas of precip and avoid most of the turbulence quite easily. The outer band of a hurricane is not that much different that other weather that is flown through every day by picking your way carefully. The trouble would have been if there was some sort of delay on the ground. The airplane would have been stuck.

Maho Beach, St. Maarten beach cam this morning, before it went off line. We're going to see a lot more of this in the next four days. http://www.mahobeachcam.com/

Cold fronts move pretty quickly, are mostly surface things, and it should move on. The cold front would block it, but not completely. More likely is that an upper level disturbance will steer it. Same as the comment someone made about Cuba. Cuba is mountainous, but very narrow, and this storm is massive. Cuba wouldn't do anything to it. To diminish, it needs to have it's energy source stopped, and that means land.

"Blue lines" are cold fronts. Cold fronts move, so it may not be there at all when this storm arrives. I'm sure most folks know this, but there are already gas stations and hardware stores out of fuel and plywood in south Florida. Lines formed at 3AM in some places.

Its just a garden variety strong low. That's quite normal in the Bering Sea during the summer-winter transition. Surface winds are only 22 knots at Adak and Attu station, and the barometric pressure at Adak is 29.79, which is low, but not tremendously low. That area is the airspace that contains routes from NY/Chicago to Tokyo, and last evening the more northern routes were being used because of it. Coast out points were Nome and north instead of Anchorage to avoid it, but get a bit of the tailwind from it. By the way, you mentioned the Bermuda High, which is one of the semi-permanent weather systems on earth, This one is another, called the Aleutian Low, though it is usually further south. Icelandic Low and Pacific High are the other two. The naming of a storm depends on where it is. In the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific its a hurricane, In the Northwest Pacific its a typhoon and in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean its a cyclone. All the same thing.

A missile launch is a pretty impressive thing to witness (unless you're not expecting it, I saw a few at Vandenberg - one unexpected one - and I nearly **** my pants). Yes. I was drilling around, waiting for an airplane to come out of Tonopah Test Range so I could fight it. I was just north of Area 51, maybe six miles form the north border. I was very familiar with air-air missiles, but the turn this one did was extraordinary. I'm pretty sure it was an AMRAAM test, but it was before they deployed them. Along with Las Vegas, they fly personnel in there from Nellis.

Regarding shear, if you go to the link I provided, and then rotate the earth to your desire, then press the "earth" thing at the bottom left to access the menu. 1. Rotate the earth to your desires. 2. Zoom as you want. 3. Select "earth" thing at the bottom and change altitudes by lowering the hectopaschal (hPa). You can see there is very little shear until you get in the 250 hPa range, which is about 35000', and then not until the central Florida area. Here's a link to convert hPA to feet. http://meteorologytraining.tpub.com/14269/css/14269_75.htm Looks like nothing to weaken it until land.

Of course they have roads, one long runway on Groom dry lake, and people who work there who use cars.