Month: April 2020

Enlarge / Hurricane Dorian's satellite appearance on a Sunday morning in 2019. (credit: NOAA)

Everything else has been canceled this year, so doesn't it seem fair that we should cancel the Atlantic hurricane season as well? Alas, life is rarely fair, and that seems especially so in the midst of a pandemic.

The most prominent seasonal hurricane forecaster said Thursday there are several signals in the oceans and atmosphere that point toward a busy summer and fall for the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico.

According to the outlook from Phil Klotzbach, at Colorado State University, the best estimate for Atlantic hurricanes this year is eight (the average is 6.4), with a total of 16 named storms (12.1). "The probability of US major hurricane landfall is estimated to be about 130 percent of the long-period average," Klotzbach's report states.

Enlarge / The author and her daughter in happier times, before the Great Coconut War of 2020.

Just ten days into the newest Animal Crossing, I was already embroiled in a fight about coconuts and trying to teach a first-grader about the tragedy of the commons.

That venture, like everything else in this cursed spring of 2020, did not go well.

This level of disquiet in my peaceful Animal Crossing universe is a first for me in well over a decade of play, going all the way back to Wild World for the Nintendo DS. Back in 2005, the portable town of Villains became my constant companion on my long subway rides from Brooklyn to Astor Place and back every day. Several years and several lifetimes later, my husband—at my request—found me a refurbished 3DS (shiny purple) for Christmas 2013. In 2014, I snapped up a copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf for it that then accompanied me on my commute through Washington, DC, every day for more than 14 months.