Claim:   Hurricane Rita wind swath chart resembles a human penis.

Status:   True.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 2005]

Check out the wind swath map on the National Weather Service website. It looks like it must be a joke, yet it gives every evidence of being true.

Origins:   To paraphrase a maxim commonly attributed to Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cigar-shaped wind swath path is just a cigar-shaped wind swath path. But some people have seen a bit more in a cumulative wind distribution chart for Hurricane Rita posted on the National Hurricane Center's (NHC) web site in September 2005. No joke here, unless Mother Nature herself is having one over on us.

Last updated:   23 September 2005

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