Wow!! The X4 flare that just missed us to the right is clocking in above the May 2024 superstorm levels on our Stereo A 🛰!! Sustained -50 Bz That is a brutal near miss of a superstorm that would have probably been visible in Mexico

Not going to say I called it, but not going to not say I called it.

Despite the clouds, still had a decent view of the Northern Lights tonight! Definitely better on camera tonight than to the eye.

What a great night!

WOOOOOW THIS IS A HUGE SIGNAL, GET YOUR CAMERAS READY!

WOOOOOW!! GAME ON FOR TONIGHT! BZ APPROACHING -60

🔸️Early data suggests we could be in for a worse than normal flu season, brought on by a cluster of escape mutations in H3N2 this year that may lift the Re from 1.2 to 1.4. We are starting to see an uptick in the US. Data from BIOFIRE.

💥A *MASSIVE* CME was launched early this morning with a predicted direct hit to earth tomorrow! 1300km/s would be an insanely fast impact. *IF* it has favorable polarity, we could see a superstorm similar to the two in 2024! Get your cameras charged.

This is one of the coolest visualizations I've seen of waves moving throughout the country over 2 years. Note the seasonal patterns in various states. From Yale school of public health

BIOFIRE and WWScan both show the lowest readings since Pirola (BA.2.86*) swept two years ago. We're in a good lull right now.

Will we have a G4 or G5 geomagnetic superstorm in the next week like we did twice in 2024? Honestly? My gut says yes.

We have a solid CME coming our way, with expected impact tomorrow night into Friday! I don't think this activity is nearly done yet, we could be in for a lot of chances this next week or two!

The sun is ULTRA active right now, two X flares today and multiple CMEs! While not directly pointed at earth, we might still see some impacts. I hope these ARs keep it up as they rotate toward earth!

Pretty dramatic damage to the vegetation in Western Jamaica is visible via zoom.earth satellite imagery. October 22nd vs today

GISAID is now blocking genomic sequencing access to critical resources like Nextstrain, Covspectrum, Outbreak-info, & others. This makes us less safe, as live tracking of viral evolution remains critical for assessment of emerging threats. This needs to be escalated.

Defaulting to surgical masks in health care settings in 2025 is one of the most dissapointing examples of reluctance to change despite overwhelming evidence. Even defaulting to KN95 style would significantly increase protection of the most vulnerable. Infuriating inertia in the HC industry.

Every optometrist's worst nightmare. Seriously though, this is not a world record you want to see broken less than a day before a predicted landfall.

The latest dropsondes into Hurricane Melissa shows ultra rapid intensification is underway. A drop of 8mb in only a couple hours down to 959mb, and eyewall wind speeds of 132mph suggests it's near Category 4 already. Wow

Hurricane Melissa is setting itself up to cause widespread damage in Jamaica over the coming days, with up to 40 inches of rain forecasted, followed by the possibility of a Category 4 or 5 landfall. An awful outlook at the moment.

We have two active data sets; 🔹WWScan wastewater 🔸BIOFiRE positivity Both suggest we are now near multi year lows for transmission. I'd expect this to last for another month before Thanksgiving gives it a boost up.

I didn't realize this last night, but Comet Lemmon actually moved considerably against the background stars over the 20 minutes we looked at it!

Comet Lemmon looks awesome through a telescope tonight!

WastewaterSCAN suggests that we are at the lowest levels in years... but I am not confident in that claim without ED, NWSS or Biobot data for the few of weeks. I do miss having 4 data sets to cross compare...

Lacking CDC data again this week, we turn to our secondary wastewater source @wastewaterscan.bsky.social 🔸The trajectory through September suggests that we may be approaching yearly lows today of 150-200k/day.

Both emergency dept and wastewater data suggest a rapid decline in prevalence after a relatively modest summer peak. The lull in evolution continues... with no new fast variants close behind XFG. That being said, we're still watching BA.3.2*

Sept 28th update: Wastewater daily inf estimate are cratering, just as anticipated via the model. This trend should continue for at least the next month. 🔸510,000 new infections/day 🔸1 in 66 currently infected 🔸1 in 165 highly infectious

I heard somewhere recently that if you want your child to excel in math and science, all you have to do is pop a bunch of Tylenol? Big if true

Get ready for late October! Comet "Lemmon" is forecasted to reach an apparent magnitude of 5 to 2, which suggests it could be brighter than last year's comet! And it's green! This is due to the presence of a molecule you'll never find on earth: C2 (diatomic carbon)

Happy Pythagoras day to all you nerds! (9/16/25) 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2

👀

Sept 12th update: Wastewater daily inf estimate increased to 600k this week. Positivity and ED data have both peaked and begun to retreat, and I expect wastewater will soon follow. 🔸600,000 new infections/day 🔸1 in 55 currently infected 🔸1 in 140 infectious out of household

The CDC quietly neutered the best Covid data on the planet yesterday. ED data visualization has been stripped of age stratification, and state-by-state trends. ED data has been far better for state by state trends than WW. Poof.

Sept 5th update: Wastewater data is trending reasonably closely to the Aug 1st model, which predicts a peak this week. High levels in the south/wetst, but it's the smallest wave since 2020. 🔸480,000 new infections/day 🔸1 in 70 currently infected 🔸1 in 180 infectious out of household

A fascinating new preprint w/one very unexpected finding suggests, I believe, that a large proportion of Long Covid may be due to chronic infection in a particular bodily niche, which could be crucial for finding effective LC treatments. It requires some explaining. 🧵 1/33

Awe, I always really appreciate these kinds of responses. I'm glad to help (for free) and I'll continue doing what I'm doing as long as people find value in it

It's hard to say for sure with the holiday weekend interruption, but we might be close to the peak for the summer. Let's see if Friday's data confirms the slowdown. For comparison, last summer peaked at 2.6%. A peak this week would match my forecast on both timing+intensity.

Terrible luck so far on this CME, with the magnetic orientation almost fully pointing the wrong way. We want this in the red, not green. Maybe It'll turn around, but I'm a lot less hopeful. That'd be two in a row with everything lining up but poor mag orientation.

Direct hit! We have a good chance of some northern lights tonight across the northern US, especially given we are close to the equinox (improves magnetic connection with the plasma) Protons are already rising ahead of the storm... now we just need Bz (field orientation) to cooperate!

The XFG vs NB.1.8.1 blunder by the CDC isn't of a lot of consequence. Here's an example of a very consequential blunder: How does one miss forecasting the Omicron tsunami only days in advance? Our models were seeing it weeks earlier. (Note: CDC is in cases/wk vs ours in cases/day)

Not keeping score here, but add another tally to Weiland vs CDC for accuracy. They finally fixed their variant proportions today to reflect what I've been saying for 2 months. ❌️CDC ✅️Weiland 😄

🧵 on awesome 🥼🔭 My favorite new scientific tool to observe the universe does what no other telescope can. It *LISTENS TO THE SOUNDS OF THE UNIVERSE* LIGO, (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) are 8km long L shaped detectors that measures mirror length change to 1/10,000 of a proton

It'll always be interesting to me that you can tell exactly when school starts up.

The funniest things about painting the walls black is that a) Dark iron has one of the highest temperatures in sunlight and b) Black paint will actually feel cooler because of a much lower *heat transfer coefficient*

Aug 22nd Update: WW having technical issues, but I can fill in the gap reasonably with ED data. South and West are ~60% higher than other regions, all regions increasing. 🔸️430,000 new infections/day 🔸️1 in 77 currently infected 🔸️1 in 190 infectious out of household

#Erin has a really strange setup at the moment, with Category 2 Hurricane wind speeds at the outer bands and only tropical storm winds near the core.

Incidence of Covid is increasing throughout the country, though at lower levels than past summers. Happy to have my work referenced by @huffpost.com I'll add that while the model suggests a peak near the start of Sept, late August is also plausible. www.huffpost.com/entry/covid-...

What the heck just happened with the CDC's wastewater calibration⁉️ They just remade it and now it makes no sense. Their previous calibration matched ED data well (as usual), but as of today the winter wave looks like a jumbled bunch of nonsense. Unreal. Crude estimate of 370k infections a day

I don't see any variants growing at any significant speed behind XFG, which is good news for the early fall. ➡️XFG leads the pack and is still growing up to ~60-65% of US domestic seqs of late July, where NB.1.8.1 stayed relatively stable between 10-15%.

It follows the now apparently standard trend of an increase in 0-11 year olds, and will impact the teenage groups harder in the coming weeks as school returns.