Hold onto your butts.

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – Key ships stationed over BP's crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico were ordered to evacuate Thursday ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie, and engineers have grown so confident in the leaky cap fixed to the well head that they will leave it closed while they are gone.
Tropical Storm Bonnie,, which blossomed over the Bahamas and was to enter the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend, could delay by another 12 days the push to plug the broken well for good using mud and cement, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and BP officials conceded. Even if it's not a direct hit, the rough weather will push back efforts to kill the well by at least a week.
"While this is not a hurricane, it's a storm that will have probably some significant impacts, we're taking appropriate cautions," Allen said in Mobile, Alabama.

Significant impacts? You betcha. What are high winds and storm surges going to do with all that oil floating on the surface of the Gulf? I don't know, but I can bet it won't be pretty. Otherwise, why would BP order the repair ships back?

Vice President Joe Biden visited cleanup workers in southern Alabama, and said he was cheered the cap could remain on.
"After the storm's passage we will be right back out there," Biden said.

We? What-you-mean we, white man? You'll be in Washington looking at CNN while the storm passes. These people kill me. They're all about making it look as though they're right there in the fight, while they visit and pass through, shaking hands and taking photos. I think they're better off inland writing checks.

Scientists say even a severe storm shouldn't affect the well cap, nearly a mile beneath the ocean surface 40 miles from the Louisiana coast. "Assuming all lines are disconnected from the surface, there should be no effect on the well head by a passing surface storm," said Paul Bommer, professor of petroleum engineering at University of Texas at Austin.
Charles Harwell, a BP contractor monitoring the cap, was also confident.
"That cap was specially made, it's on tight, we've been looking at the progress and it's all good," he said after his ship returned to Port Fourchon, La.

Remember that kid in "Animal House," who ran through the streets shouting "All is well!" while the Deathmobile was preparing ramming speed on the bleachers? That's what I'm thinking about now, and just like Dean Wormer, I'd say "I hate those guys" right before they plow me into the street.

"Scientists say" and "it's on tight" sound like words of encouragement, don't they? Some of them come from the same people who tried and failed a few times to put a cap on the damned thing for the past three months. Scientists say a lot of things, and some of them are pure, unadulterated bullshit. When they're wrong they can come up with a thousand reasons (excuses). I might be wrong (and I'm no scientist) but I'm thinking that a big storm and a Gulf full of oil is not a good combination.

Tropical Storm Bonnie is preparing for ramming speed.