An onslaught of record-breaking weather events has been striking throughout the planet. Earthquakes, extreme drought conditions, tropical storms carrying torrential rains and their destructive spinoffs of floods and mudslides brought affliction. At Final Call presstime Tropical Storm Idalia was strengthening, moving toward Cuba and was projected to strike the coast of Florida as a Category 3 hurricane.
Parts of Central Florida were also placed under a hurricane and tropical storm warning. Residents were being urged to prepare and evacuation orders were being put in place.
According to foxweather.com another storm, Hurricane Franklin was among several systems being tracked in the Atlantic as peak hurricane season approaches. Wildfires are burning in the United States, and as of Aug. 22, more than 1,000 active fires are scorching Canada. An inferno left a triple digit toll of death and hundreds missing in picturesque Maui, Hawaii, with unbearable heat baking other locales.
In July, temperatures were sizzling across Europe amid an intense and lingering cycle of heat. Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Poland all faced major heat waves. And it’s only just beginning, climatologists said.
“We can say that the first three weeks of July have been the warmest three weeks period ever observed in our record,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
Mr. Buontempo said digging a bit deeper into that information, looking at the top 21 hottest days in terms of the global mean temperature, has all occurred in July. “This anomaly is so large with respect to other record-breaking months in our record, that we are virtually certain that the month as a whole will become the warmest July on record, the warmest month on record,” he said.
Southern California and Western states in the U.S. were slammed in August by Tropical Storm Hilary, and adding woes to woe, Los Angeles County and surrounding areas got rattled by a 5.1 Richter-sized earthquake.
Hilary brought record rainfall to southern California and parts of Nevada. The U.S. National Weather Service Los Angeles said “virtually all” its rainfall records were broken. Desert towns like Palm Springs were under water, with major disruption to transport and infrastructure.
Death Valley, in California, which holds the record for the world’s highest temperature, experienced its all-time wettest day on record Aug. 20, with 2.20 inches of rainfall. This breaks the previous record of 1.70 inches in August 2022.
In San Diego, Hilary toppled trees and caused mudslides. AccuWeather reported winds reached as high as 84 mph. The typically sunbathed “not too hot, nor too cold” region has not experienced anything like Hilary since 1939. This weather was different, said weather watchers. The latest on a growing list of different, they stressed.
As Hilary moved, torrential rains, floods and brutal high winds tore up the West Coast. Tropical Storm Franklin marched through the eastern Caribbean Sea behind another Tropical Storm Gert, which tagged up behind Tropical Storm Emily.
If that wasn’t enough, 50 to 60 mph wind gusts blitzed through the Gulf into southern Texas in another storm system named Harold. Although forecasters expected Harold to move inland and die out, they predicted that hot dry weather that has cursed the area to return.
By whatever name The World Meteorological Organization gives these events, or their experts attributing the oddness of their patterns to the effects of “global warming” and man’s corruption of the environment like fossil fuel use, to the truth is that Divine Providence is the ultimate cause.
“We can never take this lightly,” said Abdul Waliullah Muhammad, the student minister of Muhammad Mosque No. 8 in San Diego, California.
“Because we understand, we are living in that time,” he said, referring to the Day of Judgment prophesied in scriptures and warned about in these contemporary times by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, The Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, His National Representative.
“God is at work: You can call it ‘global warming,’” said Minister Farrakhan, in Episode No. 53 of The Time and What Must Be Done, a lecture series he delivered in 2013.
“God is able to warm it. He is able to cool it. For He is The Master over all that makes the ‘heat’ or ‘cooling,’” he said, describing God’s unlimited Might. “He is able to freeze it. He is able to make it liquid. He is in power today,” the Minister said.
He explained from his teacher’s words that “the force and power” that God is now using on America and throughout the Earth is punishment as well as a mercy. “Let a few of them suffer from these Forces,” said Minister Farrakhan. To let them know in “real time,” that God has the power to take life, that the rest of them may fall in line.
“This is why He is bringing these calamities on you ‘little by little,’ so that you may reason with his Servant that is talking to you now, and perhaps this can be avoided,” the Minister said.
He and his teacher, Elijah Muhammad, cautioned that God is angry at America’s long and sordid history of injustice, persecution and oppression, mainly directed at the Black once slave. In his pivotal book, “The Fall of America” published in 1973, Mr. Muhammad wrote that God would deploy rain, hail, snow and earthquakes to chastise and break the power of America. “We see them now covering all sides of America, as the Holy Qur’an prophesies curtailing on all her sides,” wrote Elijah Muhammad.
There is a law that no political or social system founded on injustice can stand. The law of justice and reciprocity is at play that returns in proportion to what was sent forth. America and the White world will end up in a state of loss and ruin. The Bible says the bottom rail shall move to the top and the top rail to the bottom. America, the once “dread and envy” of the nations, is becoming an object of pity and headed for devastation and ruin.
“So we never want to take it for granted what is happening and Allah’s warning for us,” said Abdul Waliullah Muhammad.
He sees the unprecedented aspect of what happened in southern California as a “trial run,” for worse impacts to come.
“At the end of the day, it is a God—the Son of Man—who is orchestrating and showing us that we’re living in that time of the judgment that the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us,” said Waliullah Muhammad.
Infrastructure, costs and loss
The weather monitoring National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said a dizzying financial impact comes in the aftermath of calamities. In 2022 alone, the costs of weather disasters was a staggering $165 billion, according to NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information’s U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2023) report.
According to the NOAA, since 1980, the U.S. was hit with 363 weather and climate disasters with a billion-dollar price tag or higher each, using 2023 dollars. The cumulative cost of these catastrophic events surpasses $2.590 trillion, showing the devastating impact of extreme weather on the nation’s economy, environment and society. These calamities include hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, and winter storms, among others, and they have affected every state and region of the country.
Hawaii’s KITV4 reported that search crews continue to scour the destruction in the historic town of West Maui. As of Aug. 21, there were 115 confirmed deaths and hundreds of people still missing.
In the previous months of 2023—as of August 8—there have been 15 confirmed weather/climate disaster events in the U.S. with losses exceeding $1 billion each. These events resulted in the deaths of 113 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted.
“Today, climate is changing faster than any time in human history,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and Texas Tech professor, on X (the former Twitter platform). “As a result, our trillions of dollars of infrastructure—homes, roads, cities and ports—were built for a climate that no longer exists, unprepared for the climate risks we face today.”
Experts say extreme weather is only going to worsen in the future and people should not treat disasters as a one-off event when they hit.
Those who monitor calamities’ impact on economies, infrastructure, and everyday folks agree they are not letting up. The question to disaster awareness and preparedness advocates is how should folks deal with the prospect of crisis.
“Well, first of all, that Allah is in control, and it’s only but so much you can do,” said Yusef Muhammad, former president of the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters. “But you have to take the initiative to do something.”
He advises four basic steps, if nothing else:
1. Get informed
2. Develop a plan
3. Put together a survival kit
4. Reassess the plan and kit periodically
Yusef Muhammad said preparing for the eventuality of disasters involves organizing yourself, family and community for risk reduction.
“You won’t be prepared for anything and everything that comes at you,” he told The Final Call. “But you have to take that one step to get involved … invest … partner with somebody else,” he added.
The key is not to wait until catastrophe is around you to act.
“You have to take the initiative,” said Yusef Muhammad.
The guidance from Elijah Muhammad to “Do for self or suffer the consequences” is real when it comes to disasters, calamities and catastrophes.
“They don’t take lunch breaks. They don’t take days off. They don’t take holidays. And when it strikes, it’s nondiscriminatory,” he said.
In fact, apathy is one factor why people are not prepared for disasters, analysts say. But with the frequency of peculiar weather worldwide, people are becoming more sensitized to prepare.
For decades, Minister Farrakhan and Elijah Muhammad warned about the Judgment and God’s weapons of choice against a wayward civilization.
The people hear, but don’t hear, until it’s at their doorstep, Yusef Muhammad said.
As Divine Warners from Allah (God) in a time of transition and trouble, Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan are as men hidden in plain sight, crying out in the wilderness.
Minister Farrakhan has admonished the people to study how the ant prepares as described in Proverbs 6:6 in the Bible: “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”
When you talk about disaster preparedness, the ant prepares for the summer in the winter, and prepares for the winter in the summer versus the grasshopper, that lives only for the moment.
The closing chapter of “The Fall of America” is called “The Worst is Yet To Come.” Inherent in that warning is, prepare your families, organize your communities, stay woke, and heed the call from Minister Farrakhan to: “Watch the weather!”
