Lion of the Virgin, 16th Day of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): Hurricane Erin has become a post-tropical storm and is on its way northeast to go fuck with Iceland. The trough of low pressure located northeast of the Leeward Islands still appears conducive for further development, and is likely to develop into a tropical storm by this weekend. However, it's moving north-northwestward over the Atlantic and similar to Erin, is unlikely to make landfall. 

However, there's a third system that concerns me. While Erin and the low-pressure trough both tracked more or less along the same path and got swept out to sea without making landfall, the third system is crossing the Atlantic further to the south and could possibly enter the Caribbean without being caught by the Gulf Stream and getting deported to somewhere in the North Atlantic. 

Erin grew from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in about 24 hours, one of the fastest rates ever seen in the Atlantic. Only a handful of hurricanes in history have strengthened as quickly into as large and as intense a storm as Erin. The waters in the Caribbean are far warmer than those of the Atlantic that fueled Erin, and if the third system manages to dodge the Gulf Stream and makes it into the Caribbean, it could quickly develop into a dangerous storm, with little to prevent it from making landfall somewhere on the Gulf coast in Mexico or the U.S. 

Hurricane season anxiety. Meanwhile, FBI agents raided the home of John Bolton, former Secretary of State and outspoken critic of the Stable Genius, this morning, a move that no one doesn't think is anything but political revenge by a weaponized Justice Department. Meanwhile, the Stable Genius has decreed that the national guard troops patrolling the streets of DC should be armed, and has threatened to expand his military takeover of DC into New York and Chicago. “When ready, we will start in Chicago . . . Chicago is a mess,” he said, adding that he will also "help" with New York. Ominously, his vice-president was here in Atlanta yesterday, and described Atlanta as a place where families cower in fear of criminals and “cross the street” to “avoid a crazy person yelling.” 

“Those are your streets, paid for with your tax dollars, and you ought to be able to use them like any other citizen of this country,” he said. Like DC, Chicago, and New York, Atlanta is a Democratic-voting city with a Black mayor, making it a prime target for a hostile takeover by the Stable Genius' stormtroopers. Personally, I'd rather cross the street to avoid a crazy person yelling than to avoid armed, masked militia members illicitly occupying my city.   

Here's a fun little news bit: the pastor of the church of our black-out alcoholic Secretary of Defense has said that be believes there ought to be public executions and that the Bible is “pro-ICE raids."

Finally, an accelerated increase of tourism in Antarctica has heavily increased the amount of heavy metals and other pollutants present there, threatening the continent's fragile ecology. In 40 years, the concentration of metals has increased tenfold in areas with increased human activity, mostly due to fossil fuel combustion by planes, boats, and other supporting vehicles. The number of tourists visiting Antarctica has increased from 20,000 to 120,000 per year over the last two decades and shows no sign of slowing down, so we can expect pollutants of all kinds to continue accumulating in this once untouched ecosystem.