Seasonal Effectiveness Disorder
In these divisive times, you’d think there would still be some safe topics of conversation. But in 2025, even the old stalwart, the weather, has been removed from the confines of small talk. Today’s forecast is particularly political, problematic, and pathetic (with slight chance of post-apocalypticness). In an exchange with staff, current FEMA leader David Richardson “suggested he recently learned there was an annual hurricane season, stunning members of the workforce of the agency tasked with responding to disasters. He has expressed surprise in meetings at the scope of the agency’s mission…’Yesterday, as everybody knows, [was the] first day of hurricane season,’ Richardson said. ‘I didn’t realize it was a season.'” He also doesn’t seem to realize that the dramatic hurricane-related budget cuts will have a real world impact. “Richardson told staff Monday that the agency would be returning to the same guidance for hurricane response as last year. Some were confused how that would be possible, given the agency had already eliminated key programs and sharply cut its workforce.” WSJ (Gift Article): FEMA Scraps New Hurricane Plan and Reverts to Last Year’s. Of course, Richardson’s lack of qualifications for his role are hardly unique in this administration (and his unfamiliarity with the department he leads doesn’t seem especially egregious when compared to his peers). But as Anne Applebaum reminds us, appointees like these “aren’t there to do their jobs, but rather to prove that the president is so powerful he can appoint wildly incompetent people and no one will stop him.” So where does that leave the forecast when it comes to America’s next crisis? The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. (Or at least it will be soon.)
+ “The National Weather Service costs the average American $4 per year in today’s inflated dollars — about the same as a gallon of milk — and offers an 8,000 percent annual return on investment, according to 2024 estimates. It’s a farce for the administration to pretend that gutting an agency that protects our coastlines from a rising tide of disasters is in the best interests of our economy or national security. If the private sector could have done it better and cheaper, it would have, and it hasn’t.” NYT (Gift Article): A Hurricane Season Like No Other.
+ In case you’re nostalgic for the times when you could just talk about the weather and have it actually be about the weather, there’s this. A cloud of Sahara dust is smothering the Caribbean en route to the US. (When I first saw the term Sahara dust, I assumed it was something Elon Musk was taking.)
