So, I was perusing the latest updates from the National Hurricane Center, when I noticed them making yet another reference to a "TRMM overpass". This jogged my memory: TRMM is the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (sorry, the link at GSFC is down), a satellite which is used to track hurricanes, and which NASA is letting deorbit because it won't allocate a mere $28 million to continue operations.

In the three months since NASA made that decision, Four hurricanes have hit the US. Three of them took chunks out of Kennedy Space Center, and the fourth one (Ivan), upon narrowly missing KSC, split in two and attempted to head towards Houston, a hurricane behaviour never before witnessed. The insurance claims are expected to total around $28 billion, a nice round thousand times what it would take to keep TRMM operational. TRMM has been vital in understanding these storms.

Hm.

I'm also reminded of 11 months ago, when congress attempted to cut funding for space weather observation, and, less than a week later, the sun fired off the largest solar flare ever observed.

Double-hm.

Are the Gods trying to tell us something?

Just a thought,

Nathan.