As you'll have heard, more than 100 souls have been lost due to the hurricanes currently battering the Caribbean, US and South America, over 6m people evacuated from Florida and tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed
The slow-moving, record-shattering storms have ravaged the region for more than seventeen straight days, forcing millions of peopleĀ under evacuation orders. Shelters are filling to breaking point.
Hurricane scientists say they've "never seen anything like this in the modern record".
The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) has issued advisories on Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Jose, and Hurricane Katia.
Eric Blake, an NHC scientist, said this is "unparalleled here and totally ridiculous given [the scale of] Irma".
Here at Get Your Boom! Back we're working with representatives on the ground and have offered our products at "Pay What You Can" prices for everyone affected. Reducing cortisol, dealing with shock and stress, managing depression and anxiety - we have repeat customers using our products for these benefits, every day, around the world. So we're happy to help. Although it seems too little. For all of us, it's better to offer what help we can, though, than nothing.Ā
It's a tragic situation.
Made bearable by seeing the brave, undaunted people helping their fellows.
People with the strength and health to make a difference to people homeless and afraid during this disaster.
Texas and Florida floods are mirrored in communities in the Caribbean, South America, India and Bangladesh inundated with terrible weather, recent mudslides in Sierra Leone and last month's deadly Yangtze overflow in China.
In part, these calamities are seasonal. In part, they depend on local factors. But the vast majority of the world's scientists tell us such extremes are likely to become more common and more devastating as a result of rising global temperatures and increasingly intense rainfall.
We are record-breaking - and not in a good way.
For each of the past 3 years, temperatures have hit peaks not seen since the beginning of meteorological records and probably not for more than 110,000 years.
The amount of CO2 in the air is at its highest level in 4m years.
This doesn't cause storms like Harvey, Irma, Jose and Katia. But it makes them wetter and more powerful.
As the seas warm, they evaporate more easily and provide energy to storm fronts. As the air above warms, it holds more water vapour. For every half a degree in warming, there's a 3% increase in atmospheric moisture.
So skies fill more quickly and dump more. In the Gulf of Mexico, the surface temperature is more than a degree higher than 30 years ago. That's contributed to the hurricanes' devastation.
The storm surge was greater because sea levels have risen 20cm as a result of more than 100 years of human-related global warming. This has melted glaciers and thermally expanded the volume of seawater.
Many factors are involved, but human impact on the climate has added to the tendency for more severe droughts and fiercer storms.
Houston is the centre for the US energy industry - production, storage, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the largest oil refineries in the US. They've been hit hard with some huge oil spills.
What does this mean to you?
Well, apart from the obvious fact that it's just plain rude to pollute the planet and contribute to climate devastation...
It's more important than ever to look after your health, strength and fitness.
Whether it's to protect yourself, your family, or to help other people, you need to be alert and strong during these changing times.
You know I'm a huge optimist.
It's true that globally most things are better rather than worse, however you measure them, because we humans have made huge improvements in knowledge about health care, energy, the ability to travel, and understanding abundance. Huge numbers of people are working to generate clean energy, produce food that doesn't threaten our ecosystems, transform our lives for the better while protecting our planet.
We've never lived in such incredible times.
But there's a lot of volatility too.
So protect your health, know that "self care is the new health care", do whatever it takes to stay strong and fit so you are ready whatever happens.
