Good morning, it’s Monday. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. You could easily have slipped into summer vacation mode a good month-plus early after the insanely warm weather we saw over the weekend (comparatively speaking for this time of year).
And there’s more where that came from.
Today will again see unseasonably warm temperatures, with the high flirting with 90 degrees (!) Hello, weather whiplash! Skies will be partly cloudy. Tomorrow looks like it’s going to bring more of the same, with highs again possibly breaking the 90 degree mark.
Looking ahead, things are going to calm down and lower into a more normal high 60s and low 70s range. But you should buckle up for weirdly strong weather patterns for the foreseeable future, according to forecasters who say a rare “Super El Nino” is on the horizon.
El Nino, in case you’ve forgotten, is a climate cycle that occurs when the Pacific Ocean warms enough to trigger shifts in wind patterns all across the atmosphere, impacting weather conditions around the world. This could trigger floods in some areas and extreme drought in others. Generally speaking, it will intensify the already-rising temperatures that climate change has wrought.
Forecasters are not entirely sure that a Super El Nino is going to occur, but the odds of it developing from November 2026 and January 2027 have risen to 37 percent from 25 percent just one month ago.
El Nino’s counterpart – really an opposing climate phenomenon – is La Nina (they translate from Spanish into “Little Boy” and “Little Girl”, respectively. Both disturb normal conditions in the Pacific ocean in which trade winds blow along the equator in a westerly direction, driving warm water from South America to Asia and causing cold water to rise from the depths of the ocean to replace the moving warm water in a continuous churn.
Whereas trade winds weaken during El Nino, during La Nina, they strengthen. If you want to go really deep on the differences, click here. (Thanks, NOAA, glad you’re still around – for now, anyway).
El Nino and La Nina are naturally occurring cycles. That said, like so many other things, they are impacted by climate change, basically turning their already considerable impacts up and intensifying the extreme weather they can cause. So droughts can be more prolonged, storms stronger, rain and flooding more intense.
You get the idea.
Just a little something to look forward to, as if you didn’t already have enough to worry about. Speaking of which, let’s get down to business.
In the headlines…
The National Mediation Board has stepped in to the LIRR strike to try to help resume bargaining between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the striking unions.
President Donald Trump lashed out at Gov. Kathy Hochul over the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) strike that commenced after midnight Saturday due to unions and state negotiators failing to reach a new deal after she said his administration was to blame.
In a Truth Social post, Trump denied any responsibility for the labor dispute and called Hochul a “Failed New York State Governor” and “a Dumacrat.”
Hochul pleaded with unions representing workers for the LIRR, North America’s largest commuter rail system, to resume bargaining, saying the workers and hundreds of thousands of commuters stand to lose if a strike drags on.
MTA management and a coalition of unions representing striking Long Island Rail Road workers were back at the negotiating table last night, but had not reached a deal heading into the workweek.
“ We are available to negotiate,” MTA CEO Janno Lieber said at a press conference with Hochul yesterday. “We need a partner who’s willing to respond to ideas and come up with ideas and find a settlement. That’s what we’re looking for, and we’re 24/7 available.”
Nassau County executive and gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman unloaded on Hochul over the escalating crisis, accusing her of driving New York into chaos as commuters prepared for potentially massive disruptions heading into the workweek.
Hochul pushed the Long Island Rail Road strike largely to throw shade on Blakeman and pick up votes from the Republican gubernatorial front-runner on his home turf, the head of a top transit union said.
The White House released additional details about the trade deals struck between the United States and China after the two countries’ leaders met in Beijing last week.
While on the way back from Beijing, Trump had assured farmers that they would be satisfied with the deals he had reached with a key purchaser of American agricultural goods.
The administration said that China had agreed to “purchase at least $17 billion per year of U.S. agricultural products” in 2026, 2027 and 2028, though the amount this year would be prorated.
Conservatives want the House to pass a third GOP-only bill through the special reconciliation process to boost Pentagon funding and address alleged fraud in federal programs by the August recess — an extremely aggressive timeline sure to face pushback.
Federal prosecutors will try to make the case this week that three activists who protested immigration enforcement last summer crossed the line from political dissent into criminal conspiracy.
The GOP bid to provide $1 billion for Trump’s White House ballroom project in a filibuster-proof budget bill hit a significant roadblock on Saturday when the Senate’s top parliamentary referee ruled the money did not qualify to be included in the measure.
Millions of older Americans may have access for the first time to obesity drugs at a low price of $50 a month starting in July under a Medicare pilot program.
The World Health Organization declared on Saturday that the spread of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda was a global health emergency.
The announcement was made a day after Africa’s leading public health authority reported that an outbreak in a province in the northeast of the country was linked to dozens of suspected deaths.
A small number of U.S. citizens have been directly affected by the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, the C.D.C. said.
A recent suspected hantavirus case in Illinois is a stark reminder that the potentially deadly virus does exist in the U.S. There are currently no cases of hantavirus in the U.S. that are linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship outbreak.
On Friday, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment confirmed a fatal case of hantavirus in the state. An adult in Douglas County who contracted the disease has died.
One of four Canadians who returned home from a cruise ship where there was a hantavirus outbreak received a “presumptive positive” test result for the virus, Canadian officials said Saturday.
Hantaviruses remain on the minds of New York-area residents after a deadly outbreak aboard a foreign cruise ship and a suspected new infection in the Finger Lakes region.
The state’s public campaign finance board says it plans to appeal a court ruling that restored candidate Bruce Blakeman’s eligibility for public campaign funds in the race for governor.
Attorneys for the four Democrats on the Public Campaign Finance Board filed a notice of intent to appeal a ruling finding the board acted arbitrarily and failed to provide Blakeman’s campaign with proper notice and an opportunity to cure a paperwork error.
Blakeman recently brought on the PR firm founded and run by Juda Engelmayer. You may never have heard of him – but you’ve definitely heard of some of his most infamous clients – including disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
A public school district in northern New York broke state education regulations at least six times when it chose to confine students with disabilities in padded, wooden boxes in the classroom, an investigation by the New York State Education Department found.
A New York appeals court last week issued a decision reviving part of a lawsuit filed by a former employee of the state AG’s office who accused a then-top aide to Letitia James of blocking her from getting a political job after she rejected his sexual advances.
Shortly before sundown on Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani commemorated the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the creation of Israel, an event that Palestinians refer to as the Nakba.
He did so by posting on social media a four-minute, documentary-style video created by City Hall that featured an interview with a woman named Inea Bushnaq, who was 9 years old when she was displaced with her family during the conflict.
The decision to mark the day is part of Mamdani’s continued public support of Palestinian rights, history and causes. At the same time as he has championed them, he has also drawn attention for not celebrating events linked to Israel.
Mamdani, moving forward with a key campaign promise despite the concerns of some business leaders, plans to announce today that New York City’s first city-owned grocery store will open in Hunts Point in the Bronx next year.
Mamdani’s proposed budget would effectively cut more than a third of the roughly 300 boots-on-the-ground Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) staff for the entire city, critics said – and create a massive gap in the city’s public safety system.
A “Stop Mamdani Rally” was held yesterday in Brooklyn, organized by local Assembly member Michael Novakhov, who represents New York’s 45th district.
New York City’s Department of Investigation has questioned at least two people as part of a probe into Mamdani’s probation commissioner, Sharun Goodwin.
Mamdani has – with mixed results – more explicitly attempted to address specific concerns that some Black New Yorkers have with his policy agenda.
City Council members are proposing a package of bills aimed at wiping out one of New York City’s most intractable issues: dog waste. This comes after dog waste-related complaints spiked following consecutive winter snowstorms earlier this year.
A judge in Manhattan declared a mistrial on Friday after the jury in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial was unable to reach a verdict. It’s the second time a jury has not been able to reach a verdict on the charge that he raped an aspiring actress in a hotel room in 2013.
A woman who was nine months pregnant and gave birth in a Brooklyn courtroom was there on low-level charges, raising questions about why she was discharged from a hospital before the hearing.
A drunken driver lost control of his S.U.V. on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan on Friday evening and crashed into a crowd of people, killing two men and injuring three others, according to the Police Department.
Falling chunks of concrete and other debris have become the latest hazard for New York City drivers to avoid on one of the most congested stretches of roadway in the United States.
Schuyler Heights Fire Company, located just outside of Watervliet, went out of service under the command of Chief Raymond Smith at 2:15 p.m., Saturday, according to Colonie Fire Coordinator Mike Romano.
A 19-year-old man found suffering from a gunshot wound Saturday on Benson Street in Albany was involved in an exchange of gunfire earlier at Swinburne Park.
United Association Local 7 held a grand opening Saturday for its new no-cost health clinic in Colonie for union members and their families. The clinic, called the Local 7 Health & Wellness Center, started seeing patients a few months ago.
A Cohoes man faces a felony charge after town police said he planted a phony bomb in a children’s library at Mohawk River Park.
A Times Union analysis of high-need school districts found that teacher turnover can play a pivotal role in student success.
Bioarchaeologists at the State Museum, with the help of university researchers and a forensic artist, have recreated a lifelike bust of one of the teenaged Continental Army soldiers, who died around 1776 in Lake George.
Michael Carr, the local man who, as a teen, caused the fiery car crash that killed his friend Nico DiNovo and burned down Blessings Tavern in Colonie, was sentenced to a year in local jail for felony drunken driving and other charges tied to a police chase last year.
Chris Hunter, president of the Museum of Innovation and Science who spent decades advocating for the museum’s role in preserving the Capital Region’s scientific and technological history, and shaped it into a globally recognized institution, died at 54.
A Massachusetts woman who graduated from Union College in 2024 died after a boat she was riding in crashed into a pier at Boston’s Logan Airport.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
