two years ago...

...I was up late in a hotel in Chicago (ok, Evanston) flicking between the weather channel and CNN, watching Katrina, while trying to concentrate on the subtleties of cooling functions for cold ultra low metallicity gas...

Then I saw breaking news on CNN, it was not good.
Ended up staying up way too late, mesmerised by the sub-text in the reporting.

A couple of days later I flew out of O'Hare, right over the arc of storms that were squeezing the last little bit of gulf moisture from Katrina out over the Ohio valley.
Seeing the very rapidly moving high altitude clouds ripple over the Lakes was eerie, but I don't think a single drop of rain fell on me. Not from that storm.

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Were you doing some research work at Northwestern?

Cool, I was at NWU for a couple of months this spring.
It is not unlikely that I will be back there in the finite future, though that of course also depends on my erstwhile hosts - they may have different ideas after the experience ;-)