Maya Calder

Japan's gauge broke a 1997 record in September. NOAA's official measure, which strips out the warming of the whole tropical ocean, is still short of its 1983 high, and that gap shapes what this winter can expect.

The Environment Agency moved Yorkshire into drought on Oct. 9, yet Yorkshire Water plans no restrictions. The legal split, the reservoir numbers against last year's ban, and what winter rain must do.

The Nobel citation praises play and new forms; the sales record says the prize has more to move for Carson than for Han Kang, the 2024 winner. The arithmetic, side by side.

In the UTC time the hurricane record uses, Isaias was upgraded three and a half hours after 1905's first hurricane. Wind shear, El Niño's brake all season, now hinges on a trough as Isaias nears the Gulf Coast and Rachel heads for Southern California.

In the 2010s, studios steered scary movies away from Halloween season. Clayface's move to Oct. 23, 2026 and last year's Black Phone 2 suggest the calendar is turning back.

Frost gets the credit for ending mosquito season, but shrinking daylight flips the switch weeks earlier, and many mosquitoes simply wait out winter in garages and as eggs.

The three cold-weather alerts measure different risks, their cutoffs change from one forecast office to the next, and all of them disappear once your growing season is over.

Holiday aisles went up before Halloween again this year. The habit is older than anyone shopping today, and the shoppers it chases haven't changed as much as the shelves.

Day length, the normal trigger for fall color, is the same every year. When a tree turns weeks early, drought or damage is usually doing the work, and 2026 has offered plenty of both.

Yelp searches for pumpkin spice lattes are up 301% this year, and Starbucks moved its launch to Aug. 25. Here's why the industry keeps starting fall earlier.

A derecho and a tornado can look equally destructive, but only one of them spins. Here's the wind pattern, and the wind-speed math, that tells them apart.

Most people scroll past it without a second thought. For the producer, it's often the only reason investors agreed to fund the movie at all.

An Academy rule aimed at recycled themes has quietly disqualified some of the best-reviewed film scores of the last two decades, Hans Zimmer's Dune: Part Two among them.

Türkiye and Australia split the COP31 presidency to end a yearlong hosting fight. This week Türkiye's climate minister said the deal doesn't make them equals.

A new LP now averages $37, up 24% in five years. Pricier plastic, packed pressing plants, and labels selling the same album in seven colors are why.

The acrid, chemical smell in wildfire smoke isn't your imagination — it's benzene and formaldehyde, and sometimes it's literally burning plastic.

Subtitles and dubbed dialogue are usually written by two separate translators solving two separate problems, which is why they rarely say the same thing.

Before a single drop of storm runoff arrives, California dam operators are already emptying space for it. New atmospheric-river forecasting means they can now time that release to the hour.

A ten-person board decides if your movie is PG-13 or R. Six of them you will never identify. The other four, including its chair since 2019, work in the open.

Publishers enforce strict on-sale dates called embargoes for new books -- break one, and a bookstore risks fines, lost shipments, even a lawsuit.