Again, A Warning

STORM UPDATE Saturday afternoon: Hurricane Dean may have reached its peak in power, but is likely to remain a Category 4 storm, according to the Wunder blog at Weather Underground, which has been very astute on hurricanes in the past. However, category 4 is still a very powerful storm, and if it hits Jamaica head-on, as is now forecast, it will be the most devastating storm there in a century. Beyond there the storm is tracking for the coast of Mexico, affecting Cancuun and nearby coastal regions, and seems headed for landfall in Mexico or Texas, possibly as a Category 2 by then. But of course a lot can change, especially since in recent years storms have not always behaved as in the past, due to changes in other conditions not yet fully understood or accounted for in models, but likely to be related to climate crisis differences.

from early Saturday a.m.:

It looks bad. The latest report at this hour is that Hurricane Dean is predicted to become a huge category 5 storm, just as it reaches Jamaica Sunday. It is on track for the Gulf of Mexico, headed for a complex of oil fields. It may make landfall anywhere from Belize in the south to Louisiana in the north.

This is the first hurricane of the season that's predicted to be more than usually active. Parts of Texas, which may very well see at least some effects from this storm, has already been hard hit by heavy rains and flooding, partly due to the remnants of a tropical storm.

This month has seen record heat in the southeastern U.S., and some 37 deaths due to heat have been recorded in the South and Midwest. Scientists also said this week that Arctic ice is melting faster than ever observed. Extreme weather has characterized the year elsewhere in the world as well, which scientists said this week that no other climate models can explain other than the ones developed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In other words, global heating and the Climate Crisis.

There's more to say about all this. For now, we watch and wait, and let's hope our addled, crippled government is preparing.

"Join" by Elizabeth Murray

Elizabeth Murray

"Sun and Moon" 2005 by Elizabeth Murray

R.I.P.

Elizabeth Murray

Artist Elizabeth Murray has died of cancer at the age of 66. I met her once and I had a similiar impression to the description by Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times: "I have never met anyone in whom frankness and delicacy combined in the way they did in Elizabeth. Her eyes were very bold, and her face seemed constructed to make sure you couldn’t miss that boldness. There was a wildness blowing through her, and to talk to her was to feel that she was consciously effacing, for your benefit, something that would unhinge you if she let it out, which she did in her work."

"The Goddess of the Yangtze," a freshwater dolphin species

that lived in the Yangtze River for 20 million years, is gone,

likely the first whale or dolphin to be wiped out by human activity.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere
that it begins to have meaning."

P. D. Ouspensky