SIDE SALAD - Everything crunchy is good.

TRAIN KEPT A'ROLLING

The news about Ivan continues to be bad:

Ivan, one of the fiercest storms ever recorded in the region, has killed at least 68 people in seven islands or countries the Caribbean, devastated Grenada and badly battered Negril resort in Jamaica.
Monday night, it pounded the heartland of Cuba's famed cigar industry — fields where much of the tobacco is grown to produce the 150 million Cuban cigars worth $240 million a year.

Okay, you can screw with the beaches and trash some hotels. Pistol whip the trees and froth the ocean for a while.
But screw with the cigars?!?!?!?
I'm coming after YOU, Ivan.
Seriously, this bad boy is taking aim at Florida's Panhandle, ogling it the way a drunk frat boy looks at a wet T-shirt contest during Spring Break.
Willie Drye, author of Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, had this to say in an article he wrote about Ivan for National Geographic:

Getting an accurate fix on Ivan's path is difficult, however, because a hurricane as strong as this one isn't always subject to the same meteorological influences as less powerful storms.
"When hurricanes get this strong, they can literally rearrange the atmosphere around them," said Stu Ostro, a meteorologist with Weather Channel. "The question is when, where, or if Ivan will begin a gradual northward turn. There will be significant uncertainty in the future track until that happens."
Ostro noted that Ivan is following a pattern similar to other extremely intense hurricanes that struck the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico—it has continued on a westward track longer than usual before making the northward turn that hurricanes inevitably make.

It wouldn't be the first - or the worst - to hit the area. Here's how Ivan ranks in comparison to other northern Gulf Coast storms:
*Georges whacked its way through the Caribbean before thumping Key West in 1998. Like a drunken sailor, it finally came ashore in Biloxi, Miss., with 25 inches of rain. Damn thing killed 600. Damages: $6.5 billion
*Elena is the one they still talk about, mostly for the 1 million people who had to sram. Also because it just... wouldn't... leave. (I was in my fraternity hell week when this storm decided to do it's little dance.) This freak danced in the Gufl of Mexico for 6 days before deciding to wail on Biloxi as a category 3 hurricane. The tally this time: $2 billion and four deaths.
*There are people still digging out from 1975's Frederic. Freddie, a Category 3, ransacked Mobile to the tune of $5 billion.
*Camile is the big enchilada - a category 5 storm that devastated the Mississippi coast and caused $7 billion in damage. When I was a kid, I'd hear stories about Camille. People would talk about Mississippi's Gulf coast like it was a beaten dog, like it had some sort of magnetic pull that would keep storms from hitting St. Petersburg somehow. Storm surge on this pig: 24 feet. The 256 deaths it caused was almost too much to comprehend at the time. Posted by Jeff at September 14, 2004 07:31 AM