Monday, May 26, 2025


Dog Days Begin, 1st of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor): Welcome to summer and the beginning of the dog days.

For the sake of full disclosure, the first day of summer, the 26th day of May (27th in leap years) was Day of the Iron Scepter in Angus MacLise's Universal Solar Calendar. Dog Days Begin didn't occur until the second day of summer, and Dog Days End came on the fifth day of autumn.

I always thought of the dog days as the relatively brief period of the hottest days of the year, usually during the month of August, but MacLise's USC has them over the entirety of the summer, although they don't precisely align with the summer season. My New Revised Universal Solar Calendar changes that. In my NRUSC, Dog Days Begin is the first day of summer, and summer ends 73 days from now on Dog Days End. To accommodate those changes, I had to bump the names of a few other days around.

But logistics and calendar issues aside, the days are getting longer and warmer. We're a week away from the official start of hurricane season but Trump and his DOGE force have cut about a quarter of FEMA's full-time staff, including one-fifth of the coordinating officers who manage responses to disasters. NOAA has lost about one-fifth of its staff, including hundreds of people from the National Weather Service.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has spoken highly of FEMA's assistance in his state's recovery from recent tornadoes and flooding, but the agency's capacity may be reaching its limit. The staffing cuts have hampered LA's recovery from wildfires, and FEMA recently denied North Carolina's request for additional aid in response to last year's devastation from Hurricane Helene. Meanwhile, NOAA (or what's left of it) predicts a 60% chance of an above-normal hurricane season this year.

Fewer meteorologists at NOAA will lead to less accurate forecasts and the loss of experienced managers at FEMA will lead to less coordination and more inaction. As the Trump administration shifts the burden of response and recovery away from the federal government, less federal financial aid makes it uncertain how the nation will respond to the bigger and costlier disasters coming our way. We may not be ready for when the next big storm hits, and even if we dodge a bullet this season, we still have at least three more years of Trump. 

Hurricanes. Tornados. Wildfires. Earthquakes. Floods and droughts. Epidemics. All of these are happening and will continue to happen, and our president is failing to protect the American people from their affects. He's protecting the right of the billionaire class, the 0.1%, from taxes and the inconvenience of regulations, and he's enriching himself at taxpayer expense, but he's leaving the rest of us out to dry in the wind.

Welcome to the dog days.

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