Manon McCollum -- Hurricane Maria is now a category 5

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/americas/atlantic-storms-maria-jose-lee/index.html

The next in a series of brutal hurricanes to hit the Caribbean, Hurricane Maria has been upgraded to a Category 5, and is expected to hit Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic especially hard, as well as wreaking havoc on any small islands in its path. Communication services are down all over the region, so some don't even know how to prepare. With already shaky infrastructure, these islands have little chance of receiving aid from larger nations like America and the UK

This disaster is not un-connected to global warming, and, when coupled with flooding in south Asia, and wild fires across the west coast of the US, shows a grip picture of its effects. To put it bluntly -- these natural disasters are not going to get better until we, as the world's only remaining superpower, make a concerted effort to both extend help to our devastated neighbors, and create effective environmental legislation to stop global warming before it becomes truly catastrophic. However, with America's current governmental system, this doesn't seem very likely. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government" 

But that's just me. 

Another point of synthesis is the fateful hurricane that hit the Caribbean in August 1772. This hurricane ravaged the tiny island of St Croix, the home of a young Alexander Hamilton. This event led him to write an essay so fantastic that the wealthy residents of the island payed his way to the mainland. Without this natural disaster, this country wouldn't have one of its most influential founding fathers. Who knows if any world changing figures will come out of this tragedy?