With Hurricane Rita on the way Thursday, the Associated Press eschewed its normally staid style of just-the-facts wire-service reporting for a very scary dispatch: "Gaining strength with frightening speed [eds: should that be "Gaining speed with frightening strength"? Or with "frightening acceleration"?], Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast a Category 5, 175-mph monster…
Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys and began drawing energy with terrifying efficiency from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. …
with its breathtaking size—tropical storm-force winds extending 370 miles across—practically the entire western end of the U.S. Gulf Coast was in peril, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans."

Credit the AP for sounding the alarm, but the facts are alarming enough. This kind of breathless writing is a bit overwrought for Gelf's taste; it betrays an unconscious desire for extreme drama that would live up to the orgy of extreme adjectives. Let's hope Rita doesn't.