Here comes Igor

A few days ago I wrote about Igor, a tropical storm over by the Cape Verde Islands off Africa.  Well, as I predicted, Igor strengthened into a hurricane over the past few days and now is a catagory 4 - hurricanes are ranked on the Saffir-Simpson scale from catagory 1 (weakest) to catagory 5 (strongest) based on sustained wind speeds.

It's still way out in the Atlantic but it's slowly moving WNW towards the southern U.S.  It's not likely to weaken, there's plenty of warm water out there (it's like gasoline for a hurricane), and little to interfere with it.  By the end of the week, you'll be hearing more about it as it approaches the U.S.

By the way, here's a link to a hilarious video parody from The Onion spoofing how those of us in the U.S. ignore hurricanes unless they directly threaten us.