The perfect recipe for disaster.

The people of Florida in the United States of America were in for a rude shock this morning when Hurricane Milton strengthened overnight from a category I storm to a category IV storm. Surprising as it was, what is more astonishing is that the storm’s eye is pretty small for a regular category IV storm and thus it is all the more intense. Hurricane Milton is supposed to be nearing the mathematical limit of what the Earth’s atmosphere over ocean water can produce. A very rare occurrence indeed.

This incident when viewed alone may appear to be one off but if we wrack our brains we can see a pattern emerging all over the world in respect of weather phenomena, whereas it be in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, both the Americas or even in Antarctica. The weather is getting more extreme year by year: flash floods, extreme heat waves, prolonged droughts, cloud bursts, severe snowfall, delayed rains and the severest storms have been witnessed in the last couple of years or so. Furthermore, the frequency of these occurrences are increasing and their spatial distribution is being widened.

Meteorologists, environmentalists and scientists have long been warning us of the irreparable damage we are causing to our own ecosystems and climate patterns with the data firmly supporting the rising temperatures due to global warming, which have been since decades back showing a definite uptick in the average temperatures. The writing was on the wall that climate change was bound to happen. However, this time it feels like something has pivoted. We seem to now have gone over a hill, and now it is all the way downhill from here. Weather patterns are about to change drastically in the near future, I feel, and we will be in the firing line.

Of two things I am certain; one is that the earth’s ecosystem will settle into a new normal. It may take centuries to reach the new equilibrium but looking at over how long geological changes takes place it will be but a blip in the history of our planet, which has witnessed much worse. The biological processes, ecosystems and a plethora of species will be disrupted but life will bounce back in the way that it has after several ice ages and extinction level events. The second thing I am also certain of is that humans too will survive. In what condition we will be after this elaborate drama has played out in its entirety is anyone’s guess, but we can be sure that we will not be enjoying the lifestyle that we are now accustomed to; and that mass displacement of people will surely take place all over the world, leaving an indelible imprint on our cultural and social fabric, decimating the old and birthing the new.

Let us celebrate our new beginning in this 21st century, for the chickens have come home to roost.