Disaster

Luckily for residents of New Jersey, New York and New England, Hurricane Jose isn’t expected to pass close enough to the northeastern US coast during its journey north through the Atlantic to cause any real damage.  While the National Hurricane Center has warned that the category one storm is expected to cause “dangerous surf and rip currents” along the east coast for a few more days, the region will thankfully be spared the devastation of Sandy, which battered areas with comparatively tame 80 mph winds. By comparison, Irma battered Puerto Rico with gusts of up to 135 mph.

Update (4:05 pm ET): The BBC is reporting that several deaths have already been reported as a result of the quake. Reuters says at least five have been killed. The AP quoted Mexico City's mayor as saying that there are reports of peole still trapped in collapsed buildings.

President Donald Trump has taken time out of his day of meetings at the UN to tweet his support: "God bless Mexico City. We are with you and we will be there for you."

In less than two days, Hurricane Maria has strengthened from a tropical storm to a powerful category five hurricane, dubbed in no uncertain terms as "catastrophic" by the NHC. Though it has been downgraded to a category 4 overnight, the storm made landfall on the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, leaving it utterly “devastated,” according to the island’s prime minister.

"We're just waiting for daybreak to do an assessment of the damage," Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told CNN's Rosemary Church.

After the long-dormant supervolcano Campi Flegrei awakened late last year, a team of scientists that has pinpointed the now-active volcano's magma source says a potentially devastating eruption could be just around the corner.

It’s been nearly a month since Hurricane Harvey, a storm that some expect to rank among the costliest natural disasters in US history, and still tens of thousands of Texans remain marooned in temporary housing, unable to return to their flood-damaged homes, while thousands more are struggling to secure hotel rooms and other types of temporary housing, according to the Wall Street Journal.