Quick hits: It's 'cane season, and an official state horse?

It's hurricane season, y'all

"The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season has begun and comes at a time when oil from a spill off the Louisiana coast continues spewing into the Gulf of Mexico," according to the AP.

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting an active season, with as many as 23 named tropical storms.

"An estimated eight to 14 storms could strengthen into hurricanes. Of those storms, three to seven could become major hurricanes. ..."

Senate gives Mustang the OK

"The state Senate has passed a bill naming the Colonial Spanish Mustang the official State Horse of North Carolina.

"Sen. Pro-tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, requested the adoption of the bill in the Senate. The legislation now heads to the House, where it has backing from Rep. Bill Owens, D-Pasquotank, and Rep. Tim Spear, D-Washington," says the Daily Advance.

"The idea for the designation came from students at Shawboro Elementary School in Currituck County. Basnight’s staff, Owens, Spear and other leaders attended a meeting at Shawboro in January.

"There are currently about 100 wild horses in Corolla and around 120 living in Shackleford Banks in Carteret County. ..."

It might get a wee bit windy around here ...

... at least according to hurricane researchers from N.C. State University, who, on Monday issued a prediction of "above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin in 2010."

Yikes.

The researchers, led by Lian Xie, professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences, and Montserrat Fuentes, professor of statistics, forecast 15 to 18 named storms in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea [says WRAL.com].

The 50-year average is nine to 11 named storms in the Atlantic.

Eight to 11 of the named storms could reach hurricane strength, the researchers said.

There is an 80 percent chance that one of the named storms will make landfall along the southeastern U.S. coast and a 70 percent chance that the storm will arrive as a hurricane, they said. ...

Quick hits: Canes and Caswell

Dry N.C. begs for a hurricane
"If you're looking for a sign that the drought is nothing to trifle with, consider the fact that some people have begun uttering the unthinkable," writes the News & Observer.

" 'It's one of those years where people actually wish for a hurricane,' said Keith Edmisten, a cotton specialist with N.C. State University's crop science department. 'It's not a good thing to say. But it's that bad.'

"On Thursday, the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council released a map showing all but six of the state's 100 counties in some stage of drought. The map shows a state increasingly under the grip of a merciless heat wave. And there is more bad news.

" 'There appears to be very little relief in sight,' said Woody Yonts, chairman of the advisory council. 'Our water supplies are starting to feel this.' ..."

A Caswell celebration
"Kinston will be bursting with activity beginning Sunday as the community welcomes visitors from throughout the state, including former governors, Masons and even modern-day descendants of Gov. Richard Caswell," writes the Free Press.

"Caswell, who died in 1789, was elected as the first governor of North Carolina in 1776. The Maryland native held the position until 1780 and was elected again to serve from 1784-1787.

"Jo Huettl said Wednesday that the eight-member Lenoir County Colonial Commission and a 50-member steering committee have spent about a year preparing the celebration. Huettl is the head of the Colonial Commission.

" 'We’re honoring him because he had never really received any recognition,' Huettl said. ..."

Experts: Hurricane could annihilate the OBX

In "Deep Impact," a meteor screams toward Earth, plunges into the Atlantic off of Cape Hatteras, sending a tidal wave toward the Eastern Seaboard that will eventually make its way to the Ohio Valley region, virtually (I assume) destroying much of the Eastern U.S. coast.

Now hurricane experts say that a major hurricane could have devastating affects on North Carolina's Outer Banks.

" 'If we had a Katrina-sized storm, 75 percent of these islands could be gone,' said Stan Riggs, a geologist at East Carolina University who has studied the Outer Banks for four decades. 'You can count on it cleaning the clock,'" Riggs told the Associated Press.

Dozens of hurricanes have hit the Outer Banks since the English landed on Roanoke Island in 1585. Today, though only about 35,000 people live here permanently, each year some 5 million visit the islands that jut out into the Gulf Stream as if they were inviting Atlantic hurricanes to strike.

In the place where the Wright brothers first took to skies, they spend the summer in vacation and rental homes — some with a dozen bedrooms, private pools and elevators — that have a tax-assessed value of about $27 billion.

But Riggs and other scientists fear the right hurricane — an especially powerful storm packing a deep surge — could drown the islands with sea water, smash buildings with 25-foot waves and force map makers to redraw the state’s signature coastline.

Riggs said such a storm would break the chain of long, narrow islands into a perforated series of many smaller spots of sand. Instead of Pamlico Sound to the west, sailors would find Pamlico Bay. ...

Yet North Carolina’s Division of Emergency Management estimates that, even if a Category 5 hurricane turns toward the Outer Banks, several hundred defiant homeowners will try to ride the storm. Many will die as the violent weather destroys structures across the islands and carves several new inlets where land now stands up from the sea, said Orrin Pilkey, a professor emeritus of geology at Duke University. ...