Weather

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.

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.

Does this look familiar?

The National Hurricane Center has upgraded formerly tropical storm Maria to a category one hurricane Sunday as it hurtles northwest toward the Lesser Antilles. The storm, which is expected to hammer the Leeward Islands Monday with 75 mph winds, has inspired several meteorologists to superimpose the latest forecast cone for Maria over the path traveled by Hurricane Irma. And the result, for many residents of the Caribbean, is frankly chilling.

In what were perhaps the two biggest news stories of the past month, Hurricanes Irma and Harvey devastated the American south, disrupting local industry, destroying homes and critical infrastructure and dumping millions of gallons of raw sewage onto city streets - leading to the most destructive beginning to hurricane season in years.