Science

This story originally appeared on Vox and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The term “climate haven” never made much sense. After Hurricane Helene dumped 2 feet of rain on western North Carolina, manymajormediaoutletsmarveled at how Asheville, which had been celebrated as a climate haven, had been devastated by a climate-related disaster.

Some in the media later reported accurately that climate havens don’t actually exist. But that still raises the question: Where did this climate haven concept even come from?

On October 10, 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base on the Gulf of Mexico—a pillar of American air superiority—found itself under aerial attack. Hurricane Michael, first spotted as a Category 2 storm off the Florida coast, unexpectedly hulked up to a Category 5. Sustained winds of 155 miles per hour whipped into the base, flinging power poles, flipping F-22s, and totaling more than 200 buildings. The sole saving grace: Despite sitting on a peninsula, Tyndall avoided flood damage. Michael’s 9-to-14-foot storm surge swamped other parts of Florida. Tyndall’s main defense was luck.

If we’re going to find life on another world, Europa might just be our best bet. We think this icy moon of Jupiter has an ocean of water beneath its frozen surface, and it seems like this ocean might have the right ingredients for life. If we can find out for certain, it could be a game changer in our quest to determine if we are alone.

“Europa is the first ocean world, besides Earth, that we discovered in our solar system,” says Jonathan Lunine, the chief scientist of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. “We need to determine whether the ocean could support life.”

Just before Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday, many people reported that the sky above them turned a sinister purple hue. A sign of the apocalypse? Well, yes, actually—the climate catastrophe we’ve made for ourselves. But it’s still a natural phenomenon with a scientific explanation.

Visible light is a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths from 700 to 380 nm. (Nanometers are billionths of a meter.) Within this range, our eyes interpret different wavelengths as different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, in order from longest to shortest. (AKA: the rainbow.)

Earlier this year, Julian Mattucci, also known as “God Emperor Myco,” was creating new generations of spores from some Psilocybe subtropicalis mushrooms that he had procured online from a popular supplier. He claims to have not been “working them for potency” but rather to arrive at a cleaner, more robust genetic structure to fix issues caused by sustained inbreeding—common in a field that has long been run by amateurs. Interbreed too much, and mushrooms can lack general health, produce lesser yields, and sometimes be lower strength.

Eli Lilly has sent cease-and-desist letters to hundreds of compounding pharmacies, telehealth companies, and medical spas making and selling “compounded” versions of tirzepatide. This hawkish legal strategy indicates that a new phase of the GLP-1 gold rush has begun—a crackdown against any entity selling non-name-brand medications.

Tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s diabetes drug Mounjaro and weight-loss medication Zepbound, was on the US Food and Drug Administration’s shortage list from December 2022 until October 2, 2024. When drugs in the US go into shortage, pharmacists, doctors, and licensed outsourcing facilities are permitted to “compound” copies to make sure patients have access to medicine they need. With so many potential patients eager to get on GLP-1 medications, the shortage of both tirzepatide and semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy) left a huge opening in the market. Usually, pharmaceutical companies producing blockbuster drugs don’t have to worry about competition until their patents expire. But the shortages meant that it was legal for compounders to produce their own GLP-1 dupes—which they did, at an unprecedented volume. Major telehealth clinics jumped in to sell these products online at a fraction of the price of their name-brand counterparts. While there is no definitive accounting for how many patients are taking compounded GLP-1 meds, Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding CEO Scott Brunner tells WIRED that he estimates that the number is in the millions.

As Hurricane Milton roared toward the west coast of Florida on Tuesday and Wednesday, its 180-mile-per-hour winds weakened to 145 miles per hour, rose again, and then fell. What had been one of the quickest ever storms to reach Category 5 strength—which is when wind speeds top 156 mph—flicked back and forth between Categories 4 and 5. It ultimately arrived at the coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, with winds of 125 mph.

For more than a century, Tampa Bay has avoided Florida’s most destructive hurricanes. Now Hurricane Milton may end that streak of luck, as the storm is expected to make landfall just south of Tampa Bay in the early hours of Thursday morning. The low-lying shoreline, still strewn with debris from last month’s Hurricane Helene, is bracing for a storm surge of up to 15 feet.

Tampa Bay’s shallow seabed and built-up coastline make it particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. A 2015 report from disaster modelers Karen Clarke & Co ranked the Tampa–St. Petersburg area as the most vulnerable city to storm surge flooding in the US. Despite multiple reports echoing the area’s vulnerability to storm surges, plans to beef up the area’s defenses have been delayed and in some cases vetoed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Now the area will have to face the most dangerous storm in a century with what in many cases are aging storm defenses.

Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration announced that tirzepatide is no longer in shortage. It has been a long time coming: The active ingredient in the weight-loss drug Zepbound and diabetes medication Mounjaro has experienced runaway popularity, along with other GLP-1 meds like Ozempic. This unprecedented demand sent it into shortage in December 2022. The end of drug shortages are usually a good thing—but for many people currently taking tirzepatide, this is a moment of fear and uncertainty rather than celebration. For them, this means the meds they are accustomed to taking may be harder to get.

Less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene tore through the American Southeast, hospitals and health care providers in Florida are preparing for yet another destructive storm as Hurricane Milton hurtles toward the state’s west coast.

The National Hurricane Center described the storm, currently a Category 5 hurricane, as “extremely dangerous” late Tuesday morning. As it makes landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday near Tampa, Milton is predicted to bring high winds and storm surges of 10 feet or higher to parts of Florida’s west coast and heavy rains throughout most of the peninsula.