2009 Daytona 500 controversies (updated to address comment)

One of the growing pains NASCAR has from trying to break out of the relatively insulated world of motor sports into the top tier of sports is the things that motor sports fans are accepting of are unacceptable to outsiders.

This is evident in reaction to a couple of controversies over this past weekend’s Daytona 500.

One controversy surrounds the circumstances of the race ending.  With 54 (of 200)  laps to go, Matt Kenseth passed Elliot Sadler for the lead of the race.  An accident further back in the field brought racing to a halt. As the cars slowly circled the track, rain started to fall and with 48 laps to go, the cars were brought to a halt.  Shortly thereafter, NASCAR determined that the rain was unlikely to stop soon enough to resume the race in a timely fashion.  As NASCAR rules only require 50% of the race to be run before being official, Matt Kenseth was the winner.

A local sportscaster objected to this, saying that it’s the Daytona 500, not the Daytona 380.  Joining him in this line of reasoning is CNBC’s Sports Biz blogger Darren Rovell. Rovell is flabbergasted that the race was not resumed and run to completion:

To NASCAR fans in the stands, this wasn’t blasphemy. There was no explanation needed. No interview with NASCAR president Mike Helton to explain the call. After all, it was only six years ago that Michael Waltrip won a rain-shortened Daytona 500. You might have heard of that race — the Daytona 272?

Can you believe that not a single member of the media at the Daytona 500 questioned the authorities as to why the rules allow this to happen? I know this because I e-mailed with NASCAR’s managing director of corporate communications, Ramsey Poston, who told me my line of questioning was the first time the idea of canceling the race was even talked about with a reporter.

A possible reason why there was no questioning  as to why NASCAR “let this happen” is that this situation is the norm for all forms of motorsports.  The  Indy Racing League operates under identical rules for its oval track races.  Its flagship race, the Indy 500, ended under similar circumstances in 2007, 85 miles short of the finish.  In 1976, the race was run the bare minimum, 255 miles, before being brought to a rain-induced end (see Indy 500 rain postponement history).  At least NASCAR and IRL give its fans some sort of guarantee. The rules of the international king of motor sport, Formula One,  state that once a race is begun, it can only be two hours in length, regardless of whether rain impedes or stops the racing.  Formula One’s crown-jewel race, the Grand Prix of Monaco was affected by this rule in 1997, and in 1991, the Australian Grand Prix was run to a mere 17% completion before coming to an end.

Coming from a general sports background, Rovell is almost certainly ignorant of the situation in the other forms of auto racing. Prior to NASCAR trying to break into the upper echelons of sport, it wouldn’t have had journalists covering it who were so ill-informed on racing in general.

The second controversy involves an accident between Dale Earnhardt Jr and Brian Vickers.  It stems from an incident in the second tier Nationwide Series race the day before.  After colliding with Steve Wallace (~40 seconds into the video),  Leffler was penalized five laps for aggressive driving (a very harsh penalty, as it causes the driver to have to mostly rely on other people crashing out to gain any positions).  However, no such penalty was awarded in the Earnhardt Jr./Vickers crash.  With this in mind, Florida Times-Union columnist Gene Frenette  noted the seeming inconsistency and declared NASCAR’s no-call as “an inexcusable move” .  He alleges that NASCAR’s lack of consistency was a result of Earnhardt Jr’s popularity.

As a long-time NASCAR fan, I had a different view of the matter.  It is fairly well known among motorsports fans that NASCAR is horribly inconsistent in awarding penalties, whether it be for “aggresive driving” or cars not meeting specifications.  The phrase “professional wrestling rulebook” is not uncommon when referring to the governing body.

I was aghast at the penalty awarded to Leffler.  Aggressive driving is usually cited for gross instances, often when retaliation is involved (see Casey Mears Richmond, David Gilliand Texas, et al.) When I saw this punishment being awarded for something so subtle as Leffler’s brush of Wallace, I said aloud “Wow. If they call this the same way the whole season, there are going to be A LOT of people serving penalties. Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to be the case” .

Because of NASCAR’s past history, I was unsurprised to see that there were no penalties handed out for the Earnhardt Jr. incident and certainly did not see it as a conspiracy on the league’s part.  People who follow the sport season-round year after year have become accustomed to NASCAR’s erratic rulings, but it is understandably jarring to relative outsiders like Frenette.

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- Going back to the CNBC article, I’m amused that Rovell argues for completing the race on Monday on the basis of television viewers.  If the race were re-started at 9 AM on Monday morning as he suggests, only a small fraction of the people who invested three or more hours of their time Sunday watching the race would have been able to see it!  Also, one could argue that it was making changes to accomodate television audiences that got us into this mess.  For most of the race’s history, the start time was 12: 15 PM.  Had yesterday’s race started then, it would have been well over before the rain arrived.  However, since 2003, the Daytona 500 start time has gotten progressively later, with 2009’s being 3:45 PM.  The later starts are a result of trying to capture the west coast viewing audience and have races that end nearer to prime-time.

- To understand why Frenette and others would think NASCAR is being protective of Earnhardt Jr., see articles like the Washington Post’s Earnhardt could give NASCAR a lift, which suggest that a successful season for Earnhardt Jr. would mean a more successful season for the sport at large.  I think that while a better season by him may result in marginal ratings gains, etc. it would no nothing to overcome the headwinds the sport faces (e.g. ticket prices, being opposite the NFL in the Fall, etc.)  To make a cross-sports comparison, I believe effects of his success (or lack thereof) would pale relative to the effect that Tiger Woods’ presence has on a golf tournament.

Update: Touche’, Darren Rovell, touche’.  Because I worked the day in question, I had forgotten that Monday was a holiday.  And yes, having woken up at all sorts of hours to watch a Formula One race run in Europe or Asia, I have no doubt that devoted fans would have set their alarms to catch a 6 AM Pacific restart. Even those in Hawaii!  Also, I mistakenly presumed that such an event would have been broadcast on the FX channel, which would have eliminated ~25% of potential viewers. (Last year the February California race was postponed to Monday and broadcast on Fox. As I was watching  via the American Forces Network,  that detail slipped my attention).

The thought in my head, that only got out in the warped form of people being unable to watch the race, was that the number of people watching a Monday restart would pale in comparision to the number of viewers Fox had Sunday evening.  Reviewing tv ratings from the past three years, one can see how the viewership of races like the (March) Atlanta and (August) Michigan events were adversely affected by the being pushed to a weekday (lamentably, the Monday numbers for the afforementioned California race are not available).  While this would have been alleviated by Monday being holiday, there’s no making up for the sizable number of casual viewers who tuned in as the race neared its end.  Plus, some people did have to work.

September 18, 2008: Day of near financial armageddon? (updated)

Yesterday morning, Brendan Loy posted on his Friend Feed a story that has floated around various on-line outlets that centers around Representative Paul Kanjorski’s account of the events of September 18, 2008.  I seemed to remember reading about the day in question after the fact, but didn’t think much of it.

Today,  Brendan linked to a Conde Nast Portfolio post questioning whether Kanjorski’s account is true. Brendan’s comment made me interested enough to look into this:

Not just a fair question, but a crucial one. I don’t understand why the mainstream media isn’t picking up on this and investigating it. It’s perhaps the most important news story of the week. If some congressman revealed that, five months ago, he was told that, unbeknownst to the public, we were 3 hours away from a nuclear bomb going off in a major American city, the MSM would cover that, right? This is essentially the economic equivalent of that. So where’s the coverage?

Kanjorski’s account was recorded on C-Span’s Washington Journal program on January 28. In response to a caller’s question turned rant on the TARP he said the following (22:45 into the video):

Look, I was there when the Secretary, and the uh Chariman of the Federal Reserve came those days to talk to members of Congress about what was going on. It was about September 15 (September 18, to be specific-Charles).

Here’s the facts and we don’t even talk about these things. On Thursday at about 11 o clock in the morning the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of uh money market accounts in the United States to the tune of 550 billion dollars was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped 105 billion into the system and quickly realized they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation. Close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be panic out there and that’s what actually happened.
If they had not down that their estimation was that by 2 o clock that afternoon 5 and a half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapesed the entire economy and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

I shall attempt to smoothly cover the question raised by the CNP blogger and his commenters as well as review press coverage of the evening in question.

There is no doubt there were significant problems in money market accounts during that week (See Money Markets Funds Battered for an overview).  On the 17th, Putnam Investments closed a $12.3 billion money market fund, citing “significant redemption pressure”.  A citation inside an SEC rule states:

Between September 11th and September 17th, the assets of
institutional money market funds fell by $173 billion. See
Investment Company Institute, Money Market Mutual Fund Assets (Sept.
18, 2008), http://www.ici.org/stats/mf/mm_09_18_
08.html#TopOfPage.

Unfortunately, the original citation is unavailable.  What is available from them is for the month as a whole:

Money market funds had an outflow of $145.16 billion in September, compared with an inflow of $28.43 billion in August. Funds offered primarily to institutions had an outflow of $148.87 billion. Funds offered primarily to individuals had an inflow of $3.70 billion.

Of course, those numbers are net; there’s no telling how much came out on the 18th before coming back in. In its story on Putnam, Forbes reported that $89.2 billion came out of money market funds on the 17th alone.

But, there is this account in the New York Post (emphasis added):

According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening. The total money-market capitalization was roughly $4 trillion that morning.

The panicked selling was directly linked to the seizing up of the credit markets – including a $52 billion constriction in commercial paper – and the rumors of additional money market funds “breaking the buck,” or dropping below $1 net asset value.

The Fed’s dramatic $105 billion liquidity injection on Thursday (pre-market) was just enough to keep key institutional accounts from following through on the sell orders and starting a stampede of cash that could have brought large tracts of the US economy to a halt.

CNN did report 105 billion being put in by the Federal Reserve:

The Federal Reserve this morning, in three separate operations, has injected $105 billion into the financial system, into the banking system. This is a record amount in one day, even greater than the $81 billion that the Fed injected following September 11 after the attacks. So this — this is really a big move by our central bank to try to keep the wheels of finance turning.

I couldn’t find anything to support interpretations of the statement “They decided to close the operation”.  My interepretation was “The Fed decided to stop putting out money, because it wasn’t going to be enough to help” (in contrast to the CNP’s blogger’s interpretation that he was claiming funds themselves were being closed or withdrawals from the Fed were suspended).  One could read the New York Post account as suggesting that the Fed opted to stop pumping out money and instead leak news of the TARP.

A commenter questioned the $250, 00 guarantee.  I believe the reference was to the Guaranty program introduced by the Fed the next day. Otherwise, he’s badly confused FDIC insurance, which didn’t go up until early October.

Now, what we’ve looked over is the Congressman’s account of what was said in that meeting.  My search into this started with the article I thought I remembered reading about that day.  It was contained in a New York Times article The Reckoning:

Two hours later, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke trooped up to Capitol Hill for a somber session with Congressional leaders. “That meeting was one of the most astounding experiences I’ve had in my 34 years in politics,” Senator Schumer recalled…

…As the members of Congress and their aides listened, the two laid out their plan. They would begin offering federal insurance to money market funds immediately, in order to stop the run on money funds…

From a more contemporaneous NYT account of the meeting“

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”

Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”

When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as “somber,” Mr. Dodd cut in. “Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words,” he said. “We have never heard language like this.”

“What you heard last evening,” he added, “is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly.”

Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, they said the two men described the financial system as effectively bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.

Most amusing was the account of the post-meeting press conference offered on MSNBC’s Countdown (emphasis added):

The meeting is over in Washington and so to the news conference. Leaders of the House, the Senate, the Fed, the SEC, the Treasury Department meeting at the Capitol. This on proposals to have the government buy up the so-called illiquid assets, in other words, endangered mortgages, mortgages no company wants to be responsible for. The head of the Fed, Mr. Bernanke, said it was a productive meeting, but there was actually nothing coming out of the session. Speaker Pelosi said she and the other Democrats and the bipartisan leaders who were present at the event are hoping for a proposal from the White House in hours and not days. And that was about it. You didn’t miss anything.

The interesting thing I noted when reading the various accounts of the meeting is that no one said anything specific beyond the level of  being told “Financial doom impending, film at 11″  (see LA Times’ Suddenly those bailout buckets looked too small for another example).  The lack of commentary/speculation in media channels on what was said is curious, in retrospect.  It was fun to find someone, a professor of finance at Northwestern, asking “What do they know that we don’t know?”:

All along I’ve been wondering what was said to Congressional leaders. Exactly what were they told and why haven’t we been told? It’s hard to assess the plan if you don’t know what’s wrong. I think there’s a good reason for the secrecy…

… then it’s obvious why Bernanke and Paulson could not explain everything. We still have to be afraid of widespread runs on financial institutions. Bernanke and Paulson wouldn’t announce that the financial system is insolvent for fear of inciting just such a run. Despite deposit insurance, we still have to fear bank runs (the Flow of Funds Account published by the Fed shows $2.4 trillion in time deposits exceeding $100,000 as of June — this is almost 30% of deposits). There was a run on money market funds earlier this month, stemmed by Paulson’s pledge of $50 billion in insurance. However, there are $3.3 trillion in assets in money market funds, so $50 billion of insurance could be used up in a flash. Widespread runs would be a disaster.

Indeed, it appears the Professor was on to something.

So, why doesn’t the media look further into this? Are they taking to heart the Representative’s words ” we don’t even talk about these things”? It’s fairly disappointing that a publication of the Economist’s repute tosses this story out there with I’M NOT even sure this makes sense, but it sure is dramatic! and little further comment.   While the specific issue of the money markets may be too esoteric for most reporters, it certainly should be within the grasp of the Economist or someone at one of the business networks. (Elizabeth McDonald, for some reason, comes specifically to mind).

LATER: Felix Salmon’s (the CNP Blogger) follow-up tries to put the story down, suggesting that this is Kanjorski’s story alone, backed only by the anonymous quotes in the New York Post article. However, note this in the Joint Economic Committee report Financial Meltdown and Policy Response

On Thursday September 18, 2008, institutional money managers sought to redeem another $500 billion, but Secretary Paulson intervened directly with these managers to dissuade them from demanding redemptions. Nevertheless, investors still redeemed another $105 billion. If the federal government were not to act decisively to check this incipient panic, the results for the entire U.S. economy would be disastrous.

Kanjorski was/is not a member of that committee.  If his account is mistaken, he’s not the only Congressman out there with bad information.

Finger-pointing over Kyrgyzstan

One of the stories I’ve been following over the past few days has been the status of our base in Kyrgyzstan.  Manas Air Base serves as a transit point for troops headed in and out of Afghanistan as well as a base for aerial refueling tankers.  As such, it was disconcerting to read about  the Kyrgyz President announcing the base closure, citing U.S. refusal to pay more for the base, and incidents that had raised hostility towards the U.S.  That statement was re-iterated on Friday.

A post on Foriegn Policy’s The Cable blog gives backstory on Kyrgyzstan from various sources.  Here comes the finger-pointing:

A source involved with the negotiations for the Kyrgyz side told The Cable that the Obama administration was inheriting the brewing Kyrgyz base crisis, which he said had been neglected for years by the Bush administration.

“The U.S. government could have avoided this if they would have been receptive to Kyrgyz complaints,” said the source. “When the new government came into power [in Bishkek] and the [payoff] scheme was uncovered, they approached the Americans and asked them to compensate it for the losses. But the Americans were reluctant to acknowledge that there was anything wrong.”

The thing is, though,the U.S. did cut a new deal with Kyrgyzstan in 2006, which increased the rent several fold and provided supplemental aid.  It’s difficult to say that the issue wasn’t addressed. Maybe not to the complete satisfaction of Kyrgyzstan, but apparently well enough for them to agree to continue renting to us.  Short of giving in to the monetary demand entirely ($200 million per year), it’s not clear what more could have been done.

Like it or not, Kyrgyzstan (and/or Russia) waited until the change of U.S. Presidents to force the issue.

A couple of side-notes

A Defense Department spokesman said, “The actual original negotiations and now modern discussions [on the base] were all done by the State Department. … As far as I know, [the Pentagon] doesn’t normally talk to government institutions like that. We defer to the State Department, and the embassy.”

Contemporaneous reporting seems to back that up.  (See also, this State Department story.)

A State Department spokesman said he would check on such a meeting. In the meantime, he said, the U.S. government position is that it had not officially been notified by the Kyrgyz that they want to close the base.

They seem to be waiting on a vote by Parliament that has been delayed (this story says until Russia makes good on its guarantees, while previous ones suggested the vote would take place later this month).

Three books that I would like to read (but haven’t been written)

• An “expanded 20th anniversary edition” of Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis.  The book was an instant classic when it came out in 1989.  It remains an entertaining story of 1980’s Wall Street.  The book has recently taken on additional significance as it tells the story of  collateralized mortgage obligations.  Also, some interesting stuff has happened to a couple of the figures in the book.  John Meriwether was the head of the infamous Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund and Lew Ranieri went on to found a bank that failed in 2008. Also, the book was the start of a great writing career for Lewis.  Unfortunately, we are unlikely to see this book as  Panic (a collection edited by Lewis) covers some/most of this ground.

• A continuation of The Nightingale’s Song by Michael Timberg.  This book is a story of how Vietnam shaped five graduates of the Naval Academy.  The people in question being John Poindexter, John McCain, Bud McFarlane, Oliver North, and Jim Webb.  As the book was written in the mid-90’s, it comes to an end after Oliver North’s failed Senate run in 1994.  12 years later, Jim Webb would run for and win the very same seat.  John McCain has had an eventful few years as well.

• A  story of the collective Navy Individual Augmentee experience.  Thousands of sailors  have been integrated into Army or joint units serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  (In 2007 the Chief of Naval Operations noted that there were more sailors on the ground in the Middle East than at sea).  Stories like that of hurricane forecaster Stacy Stewart need to be told.  I could see this taking the form of a prefatory essay followed by anecdotes of sailors broken down by various parts of the experience (Reservists receiving their mobilization orders, going through Army training, experiencing combat, coming home, etc.)  It’s a unique part of Navy history that needs to be recorded for posterity.

Additional causes for NASCAR’s ticket-selling difficulties

The Florida Times-Union today had a somewhat unfocused article on NASCAR’s travails to sell tickets.  The article mentions some reasons why NASCAR would have a tougher time pushing tickets compared to other sports, but doesn’t mention a couple of practices that have probably hurt them of late.

One of them being the practice of making renewal of annual tickets to events like the Daytona 500 contigent upon buying tickets to the “undercard”  races.  Imagine having season tickets for the NFL regular season and then being told you need to buy tickets to exhibition games to be able to renew next year.  Then next year you have to buy tickets to training camp (as well as exhibition games) to have the privlige of buying season tickets.    I know of a couple of families that were long time fans of the Daytona 500 who finally got tired of not only paying higher prices for the 500 tickets, but having to buy tickets for more and more events.  They decided to not renew and give up on the venture altogether.  The strategy works in flush times, but in lean times the sport becomes dependant on more casual fans to replace the devoted fans that they drove off.

Another thing squeezing the fan that just wants to go the race on Sunday is tied to NASCAR’s attempts to grow the TV audience nationally.  While once upon a time the 500 started at 1:00, the start time has drifted later to 3:30.  A similar trend exists for most races on the schedule.  This affects the significant amount of fans have to travel a moderate amount (say 1-3 hours) to get to the track.  Instead of getting home from the race in the early evening, they don’t get home until late night.  Fox Sports’ CEO understandably prefers the later starts, I would think some track owners aren’t as enthused.

My new computer

A couple of weekends ago, I completed the somewhat quaint task of assembling a computer.

Parts were chosen on a value basis.  By no means was I going for maximum performance, but I didn’t go for the cheapest components either. As CompUSA recently re-opened stores in my area, I bought from them when possible.

Components:

• Ultra MicroFly SX6 micro ATX case with 600 watt power supply. This was a close-out at CompUSA for $80.
• Asus M3A78-CM motherboard. Again $80 from CompUSA, seemed to be the cheapest motherboard they had with modern technologies.
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor. Yet another $80 item from C-USA.  The motherboard dictated an AMD processor. This seemed to offer a good price/performance balance.
• Western Digital Cavier Black 750 GB hard drive. $90 from New Egg.  A lot of reading of reviews went into this decision, yet it came down to a mental toss of the dart.
• Sony DRU-V200S DVD burner. C-USA had these on sale for $30.  Pretty basic. Doesn’t have Lightscribe; to me that’s just something else that can fail.  Getting a Blu-Ray drive seemed silly as prices are sure to drop quickly.
• Acer X193WBD. $130 from C-USA
• 2 GB Kingston DDR2 1066 SDRAM.  The mother-board accepts up to 8 GB. Didn’t see any need to start maxxing it out just yet.

I downloaded and installed the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 beta along with 64-bit Ubuntu 8.10.

I scrupulously avoided Vista, so I can’t really say anything intelligent about 7 vs Vista.  That said, I have enjoyed using 7.

The only problem I’ve run into in Windows was with the Java plug-in and Firefox.  Since there isn’t an official 64-bit version of Firefox, I’m running the 32-bit versions of each.  The plug-in didn’t run out of the box.  Somewhat foolishly in retrospect, I filed a bug, thinking that it was a Windows 7 specific flaw.  However, while Googling around for a fix, I came across a blog post pertaining to the same problem in Vista 64-bit.  Following the steps in the post resolved the issue.

I didn’t have any sound when I fired up Ubuntu (apparently due to the on-board sound driver).  I fixed it, but don’t remember how (as I’m typing this from Windows, I don’t have the history handy to find the page that contained the solution I used). Otherwise, no issues.

Competitive Super Bowls of late

Daniel Drezner notes something that I was reflecting upon after last night’s game: The Super Bowls of late have been quite competitive compared to those of my childhood.  I recalled how one columnist referred to 1988’s Super Bowl XXII as “yet another Super Bore”  (the 42-10 win for the Redskins was the fifth in a series of blowouts).  To check my memory on this point, I went back and reviewed all of the Super Bowls going back to the first one I remember (Super Bowl XVII, 1983) and divided them in two.  Indeed, the games have been closer lately.

In the last fourteen games, only two were decided by more than 15 points. Both were by 27 points, and one of those (Tampa Bay over Oakland) was an upset. In the thirteen games prior, there were only five games decided by less than 15 points and there were as many decided by more than 27 points.

Year	Margin of Victory	Year	Margin of Victory
2009	4	1995	23
2008	3	1994	17
2007	12	1993	35
2006	11	1992	13
2005	3	1991	1
2004	3	1990	45
2003	27	1989	4
2002	3	1988	32
2001	27	1987	19
2000	7	1986	36
1999	15	1985	22
1998	7	1984	29
1997	14	1983	10
1996	10

As far as rating the game, I side with those like American Spectator’s Philip Klein against the likes of Florida Times-Union’s Gene Frenette in believing that the game was good, but not the greatest due to the excessive number of penalties.  There’s something about 1st and 20 (due to holding penalties by the same guy!) that kills one’s enthusiasm .

Blogging again

For a variety of reasons, chief among them being having not much to say, this space has been quiet.

However, at the behest of a friend of mine that will not be the case for the time-being.  We’ll see how this goes.

Tropical Storm Nena forms in a very unusual place for this time of year.

The deep tropical Atlantic is not an unusual place for storms to form in July, August, or September.  Once you get past the peak of season and into October, however, it’s rare to see a storm form east of 40° W and south of 20° N, which is where Tropical Storm Nena formed this afternoon.

How unusual is it to see a storm form out there this late in the season?  Well, you have to go back to Pablo of 1995 to find an example of it in October.  To find an example in the second week of October, you have to go back to 1928.  But that was still a couple of days before today.  To find a storm forming that far south and east later in the season than today you have to go all the way back to Hurricane #10 of 1903.

That little tidbit of trivia is about the most interesting thing that we’re probably going to get out of Nena as unfavorable atomspheric conditions are forecast to wipe the storm off the map by tomorrow evening.

However, that may not mean a quiet Atlantic basin as an area of low pressure in the central Caribbean is being closely monitored for signs of development.

Ike enters the Gulf of Mexico

After passing just to the southwest of the area ravaged by Gustav, Hurricane Ike has entered the Gulf of Mexico with the mid-upper Texas coast as its likely final destination. Check the National Hurricane Center website for the latest.