My only son, Hersh, was kidnapped from a music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, after having his dominant forearm and hand blown off. He was held captive, tortured, starved and then, after 328 days, shot in the hand (his only one), shoulder, neck and twice in the head in a dark and airless tunnel in Gaza on Aug. 29, 2024.
Hersh’s name had been on the list, in July, who would be released in a deal between Hamas and Israel. But that deal did not happen, because decision makers did not want it to happen. And Hersh, along with five other beautiful young people, with whom he was being held hostage, are now all dead.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]My husband Jon and I, after having suffered more than 300 days of every parent’s nightmare of utter and indescribable torment, continued advocating and pushing for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. We did not want anyone else to go through what we are and will continue grappling with for the rest of our lives. At this time there are 98 hostages still in Gaza. The live hostages must come home to be physically and psychologically rehabilitated, and the deceased must return to have proper and respectful burials.
Finally, on Wednesday, the news came that a deal was reached and will begin to be implemented imminently.
Over 200 messages flooded my phone. People seemed confused that Jon and I are relieved and happy that so many of our hostage community, with whom we feel like family, will finally be reunited with their loved ones. This does not mean we are not in agonizing mourning and oozing with grief for our beloved Hersh, who we buried 135 days ago. It means we can hold two truths; we can even hold more.
Humans are fascinating creatures. We can experience a multitude of diverse feelings simultaneously. So we can experience suffering while still having the capacity to laugh, we can be longing for someone and capable of celebration, we can be weeping and resilient, we can be yearning and hopeful.
What is essential to us at this moment is that we make sure this phase of the deal is the beginning of the end, and not the end. Getting out 33 cherished human beings is critical. BUT, there are still going to be 65 hostages left in captivity. This remains a microcosm of failure of all of humanity.
The remaining hostages represent 23 different nations. They are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. The youngest is Kfir Bibas, who will turn two years old on Saturday, Jan. 18. And the oldest is Shlomo Mansur, who is 86 years old. They are both slated for being released in this first phase of the deal. Yet back in November 2023, they were also supposed to be released (as was my son Hersh), but the deal broke down and now Hersh is dead. I pray Kfir and Shlomo come home as planned, alive and able to recover.
In addition, the innocent Gazans who have suffered terribly since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 also severely and critically need relief and recovery immediately. So this deal must happen, to the very end, with everyone in the region finally able to quench our common desperate need for solace.
While I remain ever optimistic and cautiously sanguine, a deal is not a deal until it is successfully completed.
Godspeed to us all.
U.S. regulators on Wednesday banned the dye called Red 3 from the nation’s food supply, nearly 35 years after it was barred from cosmetics because of potential cancer risk.
Food and Drug Administration officials granted a 2022 petition filed by two dozen food safety and health advocates, who urged the agency to revoke authorization for the substance that gives some candies, snack cakes and maraschino cherries a bright red hue.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The agency said it was taking the action as a “matter of law” because some studies have found that the dye caused cancer in lab rats. Officials cited a statute known as the Delaney Clause, which requires FDA to ban any additive found to cause cancer in people or animals.
The dye is known as erythrosine, FD&C Red No. 3 or Red 3. The ban removes it from the list of approved color additives in foods, dietary supplements and oral medicines, such as cough syrups. More than three decades ago, the FDA declined to authorize use of Red 3 in cosmetics and externally applied drugs because a study showed it caused cancer when eaten by rats.
“The FDA is taking action that will remove the authorization for the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs,” said Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for human foods. “Evidence shows cancer in laboratory male rats exposed to high levels of FD&C Red No.3. Importantly, the way that FD&C Red No. 3 causes cancer in male rats does not occur in humans.”
Food manufacturers will have until January 2027 to remove the dye from their products, while makers of ingested drugs have until January 2028 to do the same. Other countries still allow for certain uses of the dye, but imported foods must meet the new U.S. requirement.
Consumer advocates praised the decision.
“This is a welcome, but long overdue, action from the FDA: removing the unsustainable double standard in which Red 3 was banned from lipstick but permitted in candy,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, director of the group Center for Science in the Public Interest, which led the petition effort.
It’s not clear whether the ban will face legal challenges from food manufacturers because evidence hasn’t determined that the dye causes cancer when consumed by humans. At a hearing in December, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf suggested that’s a risk.
“When we do ban something, it will go to court,” he told members of Congress on Dec. 5. “And if we don’t have the scientific evidence, we will lose in court.”
When the FDA declined to allow Red 3 in cosmetics and topical drugs in 1990, the color additive was already permitted in foods and ingested drugs. Because research showed then that the way the dye causes cancer in rats does not apply to humans, “the FDA did not take action to revoke the authorization of Red No. 3 in food,” the agency has said on its website.
Health advocates for years have asked the FDA to reconsider that decision, including the 2022 petition led by CSPI. In November, nearly two dozen members of Congress sent a letter demanding that FDA officials ban Red 3.
Lawmakers cited the Delaney Clause and said the action was especially important to protect children, who consume more of the dye on a bodyweight basis than adults, the lawmakers said.
“The FDA should act quickly to protect the nation’s youth from this harmful dye, used simply to give food and drinks a bright red color,” the letter said. “No aesthetic reason could justify the use of a carcinogen in our food supply.”
Red 3 is banned for food use in Europe, Australia and New Zealand except in certain kinds of cherries. The dye will be banned in California starting in January 2027.
The International Association of Color Manufacturers defends the dye, saying that it is safe in levels typically consumed by humans. The group points to research by scientific committees operated by the United Nations and the World Health Organization, including a 2018 review that reaffirmed the safety of Red 3 in food.
Some food manufacturers have already reformulated products to remove Red 3. In its place they use beet juice; carmine, a dye made from insects; and pigments from foods such as purple sweet potato, radish and red cabbage, according to Sensient Food Colors, a St. Louis-based supplier of food colors and flavorings.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Severance is a complex tale of corporate conspiracy, scary scientific advancements, and the sheer boredom of working a desk job. In the show, an ominous company named Lumon experiments with a technology that splits employees’ memories between their work lives and home lives.
The two sides of a severed person’s personality are colloquially referred to as their “innie” and “outie.” The outie clocks into work at Lumon each morning, at which point the innie takes over. The outie doesn’t remember anything about what transpires during the work day. The innie, by contrast, is never able to leave the windowless “severed floor” of Lumon or see the light of day.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The practice obviously raises several ethical questions: Are innies separate people with their own desires and rights? What happens to a severed person’s “innie” when they leave Lumon for good? Does the innie die?
Read More: How the Team Behind Severance Made the Second Season Worth the Wait
And though the first season of Severance takes place mostly inside Lumon’s walls, the few glimpses we get of outie life suggest that the company is preying on vulnerable people. The main character Mark, played by Adam Scott, agreed to the process of severance after his wife died in a car crash. He suffers from depression and uses severance as a means of escape.
Throughout the first season’s nine episodes, it becomes clear that there is something special about Mark: Lumon keeps an extra close eye on him. And Mark, in turn, begins to suspect that something shady is happening at Lumon. Season 1 took many twists and turns, culminating in one of the most shocking finales in recent television history. The delayed second season will finally arrive on Jan. 17, nearly three years after the first premiered. Here’s everything you need to remember about the sci-fi story.
At the beginning of the series, Mark, a worker bee at Lumon, finds out that his best friend in the office, Petey, has suddenly quit, which means Mark will never see him again. Petey’s replacement is a firebrand named Helly (Britt Lower) who does not respond well to the innie initiation experience.
Lumon keeps its employees in line with silly perks like a dour party in which everyone can nibble on some balled honeydew and cantaloupe, all of which are coveted by Mark’s coworker Dylan (Zach Cherry). The company also tries to instill the creepy mythos of Lumon and its founder Kier Egan into its employees, turning some of them into something like corporate-religious zealots. Mark’s other coworker Irving (John Turturro) is one of these Lumon devotees.
Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving work in a department called Macrodata Refinement and spend their days sorting a screen of random numbers based on the feelings the numbers inspire in them. They’re overseen by Mrs. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) and Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) who do not reveal the purpose of this data refinement.
Petey (Yul Vazquez), it turns out, has gone through the process of “reintegration” to unite his innie and outie thoughts. The surgery is performed by a former Lumon scientist named Regabhi (Karen Aldridge) who has broken from the company and is working to stop severance. Petey hunts down outie Mark to tell him that Lumon is up to no good. Outie Mark does not want to get involved in the corporate conspiracy. But Petey claims Lumon is trying to kill him so Mark allows Petey to hide in his basement.
When Mark goes home we learn that his boss Mrs. Cobel is also his next-door neighbor, who goes by the name of Mrs. Selvig. She quite literally worships at the altar of Kier Egan kept in her closet and is keeping tabs on Mark for unknown reasons. Shortly after contacting Mark, Petey dies of an alleged brain aneurism related to reintegration.
Read More: The 46 Most Anticipated Shows of 2025
Helly tries to escape multiple times. She threatens bodily harm until she is allowed to record a video for her outie in which she pleads to be released. The outie sends a video back telling Helly she does not get to make decisions about her life because she is “not a real person.” Helly then attempts to hang herself in the elevator that transforms innies to outies so that her outie wakes up choking to death.
Management prevents Helly from killing her outie and asks the wellness director, Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), to monitor the rebellious worker. Mark is also disturbed by Helly’s outie’s behavior and begins to take a personal interest in Helly. Together, they decide to investigate what is going on at Lumon. They also begin an office romance that eventually culminates in a kiss.
Mark’s brother-in-law Ricken (Michael Chernus) leaves Mark a copy of the silly self-help book he wrote. It is full of corny lines like, “Your so-called boss may own the clock that taunts you from the wall, but, my friends, the hour is yours” and “Machines are made of metal, but man is made of skin.”
Mark brings it to the office, and though management initially confiscates the book, the innies manage to find it. They have never read anything besides the Lumon handbook, and Ricken’s pretentious platitudes seem profound to them and help to incite their rebellion against Lumon.
Macrodata refinement runs into another department, Optics and Design, which is responsible for hanging up paintings of Lumon’s cultish ceremonies and printing seemingly random 3D objects. Among the Optics and Design staff is Burt (Christopher Walken). Burt and Irving bond over their shared love of art and religiosity. They begin an office flirtation.
Dylan warns Irving that there’s a rumor Optics and Design once attacked and slaughtered Macrodata Refinement, and Burt admits that he once heard that Macrodata once attacked Optics and Design. The who conflicting stories prove management is trying to sow discord among the departments.
The Macrodata Refinement team tries to team up with Optics and Design to figure out what is going on at Lumon, but Mrs. Cobel revokes the workers’ privileges to walk the hallways and forces Burt into retirement, abruptly ending the Burt-Irving romance.
There are also hints that severance is being used in other capacities. At one point Mark’s pregnant sister Devon (Jen Tullock) goes to a birthing retreat where she meets the wife of a pro-severance senator who has severed herself so that she won’t have to experience the pains of childbirth. That means this woman’s innie has only ever experienced the pains of birth and having her baby immediately taken from her.
Also, at one point, Mark and Helly wander down the labyrinth of brightly-lit, indistinguishable hallways on their floor, open a door, and find a guy feeding milk to baby goats. It’s unclear what, if anything, these baby goats have to do with severance. But one begins to wonder what exactly Lumon’s business model is.
Dylan’s innie runs across a pile of cards that show cartoons dressed in office garb practicing self-defense. The purpose of these cards is unclear, but Dylan grabs one at random, which sends management into a panic. Mr. Milchick wakes up Dylan in his outie life through a process called “overtime contingency” to demand he give the card back because it contains sensitive information. During his brief look at the outside world, innie Dylan sees that he has a son, which radically changes his perspective on life.
Back inside the Lumon office, Helly earns a “Dance Party Experience” for meeting a quota. The foursome begins to boogey down with Mr. Milchick until Dylan snaps. He attacks Mr. Milchick who quickly ends the party. Dylan tells his fellow coworkers about the overtime contingency. They decide to stage a jailbreak so they can each learn more about their outies. Innie Mark discovers that he has a keycard that will help them accomplish this. (The doctor who performed Petey’s reintegration and tracked down Mark gave him the card and told Mark his innie would know what to do with it.)
Dylan, having hit a quota, gets to stay after work to enjoy a waffle party and watch a weird Eyes Wide Shut-esque orgy. He sneaks away and activates the overtime contingency, waking up innie Mark, innie Helly, and innie Irving to the outside world.
Irving discovers that his outie has been compulsively painting the same dark hallway in Lumon over and over again, one that ends with an elevator that goes down further into Lumon’s depths rather than up to the surface. We’ve already seen Ms. Casey take this elevator. Irving also learns that his outie has been researching severance and tracking down Lumon employees at their homes, including Burt. Irving rushes to Burt’s house only to discover Burt is happily married. Irving decides to bang on the door anyway.
Helly learns she’s Helena Egan, heir to the Lumon fortune, and that her decision to undergo severance was propaganda to help bolster support for the controversial procedure. Helly meets her father, an extremely creepy dude. Helly takes the stage as a keynote speaker at a black tie event celebrating severance and reveals that she is in fact Helena’s innie. She tells the audience that her experience has been hellish.
Mark finds himself at a book party for his brother-in-law. Also in attendance is Mrs. Selvig/Mrs. Cobel: She has been taking care of Devon and Ricken’s baby (scary!). Mark doesn’t realize that this woman goes by the name Mrs. Selvig outside of Lumon and accidentally calls her Mrs. Cobel, tipping her off to the fact that his innie is wandering free in the outie world.
Mrs. Cobel flees and the baby goes missing (even more scary!). Mrs. Cobel had, in fact, been fired by Lumon earlier that day for failing to get Mark and his coworkers under control, but she tries to get her job back by stopping the innie rebellion and shutting down the overtime contingency.
Before Mr. Milchick can turn off the overtime contingency, Mark reveals everything he knows to his sister Devon and pressures her to find out what’s happening at Lumon. While hunting for the baby (the baby is fine, don’t worry!), Mark finds a framed picture from his wedding. He discovers that his supposedly dead wife is, in fact, Ms. Casey, whom he has seen alive and well inside Lumon—though he never recognized her. Mark yells, “She’s alive!” just as Milchick tackles Dylan, ending the overtime contingency. And Season 1 ends.
After living in the Pacific Palisades for three generations, Chad Comey’s family was not scared of fire.
“I’d always imagined that the earthquake would do us in,” says Comey, who lives with and cares for his disabled parents. “There was a fire in 2019 in the Palisades. My parents did not evacuate for that fire. There was a fire in 1978 that came within an eighth of a mile of our property. My parents lived through that one.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]On the morning of Jan. 7, when Comey, 31, looked through a pair of binoculars and saw the Palisades Fire, which had already torn through 200 acres, leaping across the hillside toward his parents home, he wasn’t panicking yet. “We’ve had worse,” he thought to himself.
By that night, their home was gone.
“You just spend your whole life accumulating certain things that mean something to you, and in 12 hours, it’s all gone,” he says.
A number of factors have made the wildfires spreading through Los Angeles among the most destructive in the state’s history. California’s wildfire season has stretched on later than usual, and dry vegetation and strong Santa Ana winds have caused the fire to spread rapidly. As of Jan. 14, the Palisades Fire which so far burned through nearly 24,000 acres, was 17% contained, while the Eaton Fire, which has torn through 14,000 acres, was 35% contained, according to CAL FIRE. Over 12,000 structures have been destroyed, and thousands of people have been displaced, forced to evacuate with little warning. The fires have killed at least 24 people—16 related to the Eaton Fire —making it one of the deadliest in California’s history.
Heather McAlpine, a volunteer with Altadena Mountain Rescue, saw the devastation first-hand on the evening of Jan. 7 when the Eaton Fire broke out. She began aiding with evacuations, knocking on doors until 2 a.m. and helping those who might need assistance leaving. She has helped with evacuations in the past, but she says she’s never seen anything like this: “It was just completely overwhelming.”
McAlpine recalls knocking on doors that night near Eaton Canyon, where the Eaton Fire began. “I remember seeing the entire Canyon lit up and feeling very sad for the wildlands and people in the vicinity,” she says. “I just didn’t think that it was going to affect me.”
Later in the evening, McAlpine, who lives in Altadena, was called to do a wellness check near her home. She could see the fire getting closer, but an evacuation order had not yet been called. She decided to go home and pick up her cat, along with a few essentials.
The next day, she went back to confirm what she already knew. The entire block was gone.
“It was such a special place, and I’m so sad for the community,”
McAlpline was living in a cottage, and while she had renters insurance, she’s unsure just how much it will do.
For many victims, fire insurance is not only unaffordable—it’s unavailable. Just months before the fires, insurers dropped nearly 70% of policyholders in Pacific Palisades, deeming them too much of a fire risk to insure. Now, many are left without coverage in what is expected to be one of the most costly wildfires in U.S. history. While government agencies have yet to provide preliminary damage estimates, analysts at Accuweather estimate losses could reach $52 to $57 billion.
Comey says that fire insurance was too expensive to even consider. “There’s no money in the budget to cover insurance,” he says. “There’s barely enough money for them to get groceries.”
After evacuating from the Palisades on Jan. 7, another pair of residents, Alex Hill and her mother Kristen Van Vlack, didn’t know where to go. “Everyone that we know lived in the Palisades,” says Hill.
The two drove to Santa Monica and sat in a park until Van Vlack found an Airbnb there for the night. But once they settled in, it became clear they couldn’t stay. “We heard lots of sirens going by, and one fire truck was just driving really slowly near where we were,” says Hill. “And just looking in the sky, like it was glowing red.”
The winds were picking up, and they were worried they’d need to evacuate again, so they packed up again and drove a few miles south to Marina Del Rey, where they parked their car in a Ralph’s grocery store parking lot and tried to sleep. When they woke, another fire had broken out, and the sky was red in every direction.
Ashley Pomeroy, who also lives in the Palisades, had driven six hours north to Mammoth Mountain with her dad on Jan. 7 when her mom called to tell them they had less than three minutes to evacuate their home.
“We were on the freeway driving home, speeding, trying to see if we could get back home before the fire hit it,” she says. “But on the way there, we heard all our alarms go off and our sprinklers go off. We knew that it was over.”
Pomeroy, a student at Colorado University in Boulder, is mourning the Palisades community she grew up in and wondering what it might now become. “My friends and I talk about it all the time, like we can’t imagine growing up somewhere else. It was just picture perfect,” she says. Her family expects to rebuild, she says, though the process could take years.
For now, in the areas razed by fires, little is left. On Thursday, Hill went with a friend to her grandparents’ old home, which the family had just sold in December. She grabbed a few bricks from the driveway, took a photo of the 200 year-old eucalyptus tree the late actor Will Rogers had planted, still standing.
They drove to the Palisades Village, a shopping center at the heart of the town. The windows were still intact, and music was still playing. Rick Caruso, a billionaire and unsuccessful Los Angeles mayoral candidate who developed the center, hired private firefighters—a practice that some have criticized—to protect the property as emergency responders have been overwhelmed.
It was a shock for Hill, who had worked at a restaurant in the Village, but quit after the fire. “My job is still there when they open,” she says. “I’d have a job, but not a home.”
Though they lost all of their possessions, Hill’s mother Van Vlack says they were luckier than most. For years Van Vlack had been thinking of leaving Los Angeles, and at the end of 2024, she ended up visiting a friend in Meridian, Idaho, and closed on a house there on December 30, eight days before the fire came. Van Vlack and Hill drove there over the weekend and are there now, in an empty home with their two dogs.
Still, Van Vlack can’t help but mourn the things that cannot be replaced: hundred year-old Dutch doors that were once on the commercial property her grandparents owned, Mother’s Day cards collected over the years.
Hill is waiting to return to the Palisades, where she thinks their condo’s storage unit, located below ground, might still be intact. It doesn’t contain much—mostly holiday decor in big plastic tubs, she says—but it’s the only thing left from their home.
“I want to go back,” Hill says. “It might be silly decorations, but it’s from our home, and it has memories for us.”
If you would like to donate to the victims of the California wildfires, donate here.
In late 2022, Erin, a 43-year-old from Pennsylvania, agreed to spend six weeks in a psychiatric ward, getting intensive treatment for an illness she knew she didn’t have.
That decision was a last resort for Erin, who asked to be identified only by her first name for privacy. Her health had deteriorated after she caught COVID-19 nearly a year earlier; the virus left her with pain, fatigue, rapid weight loss, digestive problems, and vertigo. After another bout with a virus months later, Erin only got sicker, developing heart palpitations, muscle spasms, hoarseness, and pain in her neck, throat, and chest.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Erin was no stranger to chronic illness, having coped with a connective-tissue disorder her whole life. This was different. She became unable to work and rarely left her home. Her usual doctors were stumped; others said her litany of symptoms could be manifestations of anxiety.
When it became too painful to eat and swallow, Erin grew severely malnourished and was hospitalized at a large academic medical center. “I felt at the time like this was my last hope,” says Erin, who has since been diagnosed with Long COVID. “If I didn’t get any answers there, I didn’t know where to go afterward.”
Once again, however, she was disappointed. The only physical diagnosis her doctors landed on was vocal-cord dysfunction, which Erin felt did not explain her wide range of symptoms. When her doctors began to discuss discharging her, Erin panicked and said she could not manage her excruciating symptoms at home—a sentiment that she says contributed to concerns of self-harm among her doctors and kicked off conversations about a stay in the psychiatric ward. Eventually, seeing no other way forward, Erin agreed to go. “I just got increasingly defeated over time,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do.”
She was admitted for a six-week stay and given diagnoses she knew were wrong: an eating disorder and anxiety.
Read More: Long COVID Doesn’t Always Look Like You Think It Does
The vast majority of Long COVID patients will not land in psychiatric wards, but Erin is far from the only one who has. “Emergency rooms are dangerous places for people with Long COVID,” says David Putrino, who studies and treats the condition as director of rehabilitation innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York.
Numerous patients, he says, are told that inpatient mental-health care is their best or only option. He has worked with at least five patients who were ultimately admitted—and says some of his patients’ stories sound a lot like Erin’s. “Imagine you go to an emergency department, you wait 13 or 14 hours, your condition actually deteriorates, and then you’re told, ‘Hey, good news, everything is normal and we’re sending you home,’” Putrino says. “Going home doesn’t sound like a survivable outcome. So at that point you might break down…and often that gets reinterpreted as ‘Let’s put this person on a psych hold.’”
Such experiences fit into a long, troubling tradition in medicine. Because there often aren’t conclusive tests for these types of complex chronic conditions, and because many patients do not outwardly appear unwell, they’re frequently told that they aren’t physically sick at all—that symptoms are all in their heads. “Mainstream medicine really isn’t geared toward treating conditions and diseases that it cannot see under a microscope,” says Larry Au, an assistant professor of sociology at the City College of New York who has studied one of the consequences of that disconnect: medical gaslighting of Long COVID patients.
The chronic illnesses that make doctors doubt their patients often start after what “should” be a short-lived sickness. And it’s not just COVID-19; many diseases, from Lyme to mono to the flu, can lead to mysterious, lingering symptoms that are often ruinous but difficult to explain.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), for example, can follow a variety of viral or bacterial infections, leading to cognitive problems and extreme fatigue made worse by physical or mental exertion. (There is so much overlap between the symptoms of Long COVID and ME/CFS that many people now meet diagnostic criteria for both.) Today, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls ME/CFS a “serious, debilitating” biological illness—but for decades, it was written off as psychosomatic. A 1988 paper by researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggested that it could be related to “unachievable ambition” and “poor coping skills.” And in 1996, a CDC researcher told a journalist that the condition has no viral cause, results in no immune abnormalities, and could be summed up as “hysteria.”
Because the disease was for so long dismissed as psychological, many clinicians to this day try treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy that, at best, do nothing to address the condition’s physical symptoms—and, at worst, exacerbate them. Elizabeth Knights, who is 40 and lives in Massachusetts, went through even more intensive mental-health treatment. She spent several weeks in a psychiatric ward in 2006 before finally being diagnosed with ME/CFS and finding care that dramatically improved her health.
During her senior year of high school, Knights caught a mono-like illness that never fully went away. Once at the top of her academic class and an avid skier and rock climber, Knights eventually had to withdraw from college and move in with her parents because she couldn’t function under the strain of persistent fatigue, flulike symptoms, and cognitive dysfunction—all of which her doctors chalked up to depression.
“I kept insisting, ‘There’s something else going on here,’” Knights remembers. But she didn’t know about ME/CFS at that time, and her doctors were adamant that her problems were psychological. So when physicians recommended she try inpatient psychiatric care, she went along with it. “That was the only path that was presented to me,” Knights remembers, and she took it.
Read More: The Relentless Cost of Chronic Diseases
The experience made things worse. She was given numerous medications to which she had bad reactions and went through electroconvulsive therapy, which she says damaged her memory to the point that she had to relearn how to talk and navigate her hometown. “Nobody was listening to me, and people were not informed enough to make a correct diagnosis,” she says. “I was being misdiagnosed and treated for something that I didn’t have.”
Rivka Solomon, a longtime ME/CFS patient advocate, says she hears this story a couple times a year: a patient, like Knights, has been wrongly admitted to or threatened with inpatient psychiatric care. And those are just the instances she learns about. “I worry about who is, right now, lying in a bed in a psych ward, too sick to function, left with no one to properly care for them, left with no one to advocate for them,” she says.
The problem is larger than individual doctors, says Mount Sinai’s Putrino. People with conditions like Long COVID and ME/CFS may benefit from inpatient rehabilitative care, for example—but if they don’t meet admission criteria set by hospitals, state regulatory boards, or insurance plans, even well-meaning clinicians may be stuck. Sometimes, “there’s no administrative way to admit these people,” Putrino says. A psychiatric diagnosis is, in some cases, the simplest way to get a patient in.
Another complicating factor: there is no validated medical test for detecting Long COVID, ME/CFS, or similar conditions like chronic Lyme disease, another post-infection illness that remains controversial. Although studies have identified biological signs of these illnesses, researchers have not yet found clear biomarkers that lead to definitive diagnoses. “The medical profession loves cold, hard diagnostic tools and evidence-based medicine. They want randomized controlled trials and an easy test that tells you yes or no,” says Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, who runs a Long COVID clinic and is chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. When those tools aren’t available, clinicians sometimes deem patients’ symptoms psychological.
Ruth, a 32-year-old who asked to use only her first name for privacy, recently had that experience, even though she is a mental-health professional herself and already knew she had Long COVID. One morning in 2024, she woke up in pain, struggling to breathe and unable to control her bladder. When she visited an emergency room, hoping for medication that might help, she says she was told by a doctor that she was experiencing anxiety. “I was like, ‘I am fading away here. I am slowly dying. I need help,’” she says. But despite her repeated requests for care and her own psychological training, she says she was turned away.
These dismissals can also be damaging, Solomon says. “The extreme examples of patients being admitted to psych hospitals are just the tragic tip of the iceberg,” she says. Patients who aren’t believed may struggle to get any medical care at all, or get pushed toward therapies that don’t work. They may also face an uphill battle when trying to secure insurance coverage for treatments, disability benefits, or workplace accommodations.
Read More: Long Waits, Short Appointments, Huge Bills: U.S. Health Care Is Causing Patient Burnout
Without the backing of a doctor or diagnosis, patients often find that other people in their lives don’t believe them, either. Doug Gross, chair of the department of physical therapy at the University of Alberta, has studied how hard it is for Long COVID patients to find medical care. He says patients often talk about “disbelief from not only the health care system…but more broadly in their social sphere: family members, employers, supervisors at work.”
Psychiatric care is not always inappropriate for patients with Long COVID or similar conditions, Verduzco-Gutierrez says. Some do develop depression, anxiety, and other mental-health symptoms, potentially including severe neuropsychiatric complications related to inflammation in their brains or other physiological issues, Putrino says. “Some folks can really benefit from skilled psychological care, even if it’s not their primary or underlying, driving cause of their illness,” he says.
Some clinicians, however, fail to differentiate between side effects and root causes, or use screening techniques that aren’t well suited for people with chronic conditions, Verduzco-Gutierrez says. For example, asking someone whether they struggle to get out of bed in the morning—a common question when screening for depression—isn’t all that useful if the clinician doesn’t differentiate between physical and mental exhaustion. “The only way to solve this is more education,” Putrino says, “so the next generation of clinicians are not looking at these patients and saying, ‘A couple of antidepressants and a day off will fix you.’”
Katiana Mekka, a 26-year-old Long COVID patient from Greece, says education is especially needed outside the U.S. Last fall, she says, she was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward and held for three days, until she passed a thorough screening test for mental-health disorders. The ordeal worsened her already severe illness, leaving her virtually unable to eat, move, or talk for days after.
“These illnesses are so mistreated and misdiagnosed,” Mekka says, adding that so few doctors in Greece know about Long COVID that she has been forced to seek virtual support from specialists in other countries. “The patients that I know, we all have so much will to live and so many dreams. This is not a mental issue. We have severe symptoms.”
Read More: 11 Ways to Respond When Someone Insults a Loved One’s Disability
There are signs that the medical community might be getting better at treating people with Long COVID and diseases like it. The sheer volume of Long COVID patients who have emerged in the wake of the pandemic—nearly 20% of U.S. adults have experienced symptoms at some point—has forced a reckoning with the medical system’s history and sparked new research interest in these conditions. The federal government now has an office dedicated to Long COVID research, and the NIH earmarked an estimated $110 million for Long COVID research in 2024. (Federal research funding for ME/CFS is still paltry in comparison: an estimated $13 million in 2024.) Solomon says more research on not just Long COVID but all infection-associated illnesses is critical, so scientists can develop reliable tests and effective treatments.
There’s a long way to go. Putrino says he’s been advocating for systemic changes that would make it easier for hospitals to admit patients with complex conditions and for patients to secure reimbursement for in-home care, but progress is slow. Stigma and denial also still persist. And to this day, most U.S. medical schools do not teach trainee doctors about conditions like ME/CFS.
Despite all she’s been through, Erin, the Long COVID patient who spent time in a U.S. mental hospital, considers herself lucky. She found a silver lining to her stay: in the psychiatric ward, she met a clinician—a speech pathologist she saw because of her vocal dysfunction—who knew about Long COVID and referred her to a specialist. She met with that specialist after leaving inpatient care and in 2023 was diagnosed with both Long COVID and ME/CFS. Under proper care, and after plenty of rest, she’s been able to manage her symptoms well enough to return to work and a mostly normal life.
“That took me a long time, but I was lucky and found someone who actually helped,” Erin says. “Some people never figure it out.”
In the wake of reports that a lack of water supply may have negatively impacted the work of firefighters battling the multiple blazes in Los Angeles, California Governor Gavin Newsom called for an investigation on Friday, Jan. 10.
“The ongoing reports of the loss of water pressure to some local fire hydrants during the fires and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir are deeply troubling to me and to the community,” Newsom wrote in the letter addressed to Janisse Quiñones, CEO of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and L.A. County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“While water supplies from local fire hydrants are not designed to extinguish fires over large areas, losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors.”
Newsom posted the letter on X (formerly Twitter), telling his followers: “We need answers to ensure this does not happen again and we have every resource available to fight these catastrophic fires.”
Read More: L.A. Fires Show the Reality of Living in a World with 1.5°C of Warming
Currently, the Los Angeles Fire Department and CAL FIRE are fighting multiple blazes, the most dominant being the Palisades Fire. As of Jan. 12, at least 16 people are thought to have died, according to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office, thousands of homes have been destroyed, and over 40,000 acres have been decimated.
Soon after the first fire sparked on Jan. 7, reports and concerns began to emerge that the fire hydrants were running dry, after being overstressed without aircraft support.
On Jan. 8, Los Angeles Fire Department Public Information Officer Erik Scott, addressed the “multiple questions” he was receiving about firefighters experiencing challenges with water pressure when fighting the Palisades Fire. He posted on X about how water supply and dry conditions had negatively affected firefighting efforts, despite the fact that the L.A. Department of Water and Power filled all available water tanks in the area.
“[W]ater availability was impacted at higher elevations, which affected some fire hydrants due to limited replenishment of water tanks in those areas,” he wrote. “The extreme demand caused a slower refill rate for these tanks which created a challenge for our firefighting effort.”
In a news conference on Wednesday morning, both Quiñones and Pestrella discussed the struggles with water supply. “We pushed the system to the extreme,” Quiñones said. “We’re fighting a wildfire with an urban water system. And that is really challenging.”
On Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which helps supply water in Pacific Palisades, was offline for maintenance when the Palisades fire ignited on Tuesday. The 117-million-gallon-water storage is a fundamental tool in sustaining the water system for the residential area.
In a memo posted by the LADWP attempting to combat misinformation regarding water supply, they clarified that “LADWP was required to take the Santa Ynez Reservoir out of service to meet safe drinking water regulations,” but stated that “water supply remained strong to the area.”
They also said that they are “initiating [their] own investigation about water resiliency.”
Read More: How to Help Victims of the Los Angeles Wildfires
Some experts have told the media that “no water system in the world” would have been able to handle the sheer magnitude of fires that have blazed over the course of the week, especially with the strong Santa Ana winds often grounding air support.
According to Newsom, many of Southern California’s largest reservoirs are “currently at or above their historic average storage levels for this time of year.” And while he has ordered for an investigation “into the loss of water pressure to local fire hydrants and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir,” he states on his new California fire facts website—launched on Jan. 11 with the intention of combating misinformation about the fires—that “reservoirs are full and water is available.”
He also reminds readers that “urban water systems are built for structure fires and fire suppression, not hurricane-force firestorms” and that the water supply was “exhausted because of the extraordinary nature of this hurricane-force firestorm.”
Newsom addressed his call for an independent investigation in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, which aired on Jan. 12. He was asked what questions he’s hoping to get answered. “The same ones you’re asking…What the hell happened? What happened to the water system…Was it just overwhelmed?” Newsom said. “Did it contribute in any way to our inability to fight the fire? Or were 99 mile-an-hour winds determinative and there was really no firefight that could’ve been more meaningful? So I want—all of us want to know those answers, and I just don’t want to wait because people are asking me. I want to know those facts. I want them objectively determined, and let the chips fall where they may. This is not about finger pointing.”
Throughout the week, there has also been much discussion as to whether budget cuts to the fire department have affected LAFD’s ability to fight the destructive wildfires. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times posted on X, criticizing Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
“Fires in LA are sadly no surprise, yet the Mayor cut LA Fire Department’s budget by $23M,” he claimed. “And reports of empty fire hydrants raise serious questions.”
L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley has also criticized the city and Bass, stating on Fox 11 that the budget “was cut, and it did impact our ability to provide service.” She said: “We are still under-staffed, we are still under-resourced, and we’re still under-funded,” and added that she was not aware that the reservoir had been closed before Tuesday. “That is something to discuss, and we’re going to look into that in regard to how we can ensure there’s going to be water when we need it,” Crowley said in the Jan. 10 interview.
Newsom has denied that there were cuts to the firefighting budget. “CA did NOT cut our firefighting budget. We have nearly doubled the size of our firefighting army and built the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet,” Newsom wrote in a social media post announcing his new California fire facts website.
Read More: Understanding How Massive the L.A. Fires Are
Meanwhile, in a memo Crowley sent to Bass in Dec. 2024, she stated that the elimination of civilian positions and overtime within the department was causing “unprecedented operational challenges” and “severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.”
Bass, who was criticized for being out of the country when the fires broke out, has repeatedly defended her support of the fire department throughout the week, stating in a news conference on Jan. 9 that “the impact of our budget really did not impact what we’ve been going through over the last few days.”
TIME has reached out to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Department of Public Works for comment.
Netflix’s The Breakthrough is a gripping Swedish miniseries that brings to life one of Europe’s most perplexing and haunting criminal cases of this century: a 2004 double murder in the country’s southern city of Linköping. The four-part drama not only explores the devastating crime but also the groundbreaking technique that led investigators to solve it after 16 years. Directed by Lisa Siwe (The Bridge) and written by Oskar Söderlund (Snabba Cash), the series blends true crime with human drama, focusing on the resilience of the victims’ families and the investigators who refused to give up.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Since premiering earlier this week, the show has secured a spot on Netflix’s daily top 10 most watched series. Let’s dive into the real story behind The Breakthrough and how it transformed a cold case into a historic moment in forensic science.
Read more: 33 True Crime Documentaries That Shaped the Genre
On the morning of Oct. 19, 2004, the small city of Linköping was shaken by an unthinkable act of violence. Eight-year-old Mohammed Ammouri was walking to school when he was brutally attacked and stabbed by a masked assailant. Anna-Lena Svensson, a 56-year-old woman who happened to witness the attack, tried to intervene but was also fatally stabbed.
The murders were shocking not only for their brutality but also for their randomness. There appeared to be no connection between the victims or any clear motive for the crime. Despite an intensive investigation, which included securing DNA evidence from the crime scene and the perpetrator’s discarded hat, the police were unable to identify the killer.
The case soon became known as one of Sweden’s most notorious cold cases, leaving the city of Linköping and the victims’ families desperate for answers.
For over a decade, the Linköping murders haunted Swedish law enforcement. Investigators meticulously reviewed the evidence and pursued countless leads, but every effort ended in frustration. The DNA evidence, while a crucial piece of the puzzle, yielded no matches in national or international databases.
The families of Ammouri and Svensson were left to grieve without closure. Public interest in the case waned, and it seemed the murders might never be solved. However, a breakthrough was on the horizon—one that would revolutionize criminal investigations in Europe.
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In 2020, forensic genealogy, a relatively new investigative technique, became the key to solving the case. This method, which had already gained prominence in the United States, uses DNA samples to trace a suspect’s family tree through publicly available genealogical databases.
The turning point in the Linköping case came when genealogist Peter Sjölund joined the investigation. By analyzing the DNA evidence, Sjölund traced the killer’s ancestry back over 200 years, constructing an intricate family tree that eventually led to the suspect: Daniel Nyqvist.
Nyqvist, 37 years old at the time, making him in his early 20s when the crime occurred, was arrested in June 2020. His DNA matched the evidence from the crime scene, and he quickly confessed to the murders. In court, Nyqvist claimed he had acted under the influence of voices in his head, describing the attacks as unprovoked. He was found guilty and sentenced to indefinite psychiatric care.
This marked the first time in European history that forensic genealogy was used to solve a murder case, setting a precedent for future investigations.
The Breakthrough is a dramatized retelling of the events surrounding the Linköping murders. Directed by Lisa Siwe, the series balances the procedural intensity of a crime thriller with a deep exploration of human tragedy.
The narrative unfolds in two timelines: the immediate aftermath of the murders in 2004 and the renewed investigation in 2020. Peter Eggers portrays John, based on the determined detective Jan Egon Staaf who refused to let the case go cold, while Mattias Nordkvist plays Per, a character inspired by genealogist Peter Sjölund. The series also introduces fictionalized versions of the victims and their families, adding emotional depth to the story.
Siwe emphasized the show’s focus on the human aspects of the tragedy during an interview with Netflix. “Though this is a fictional drama series about a crime, it is, above all, a depiction of a human tragedy—where we place our focus on the victims and the investigation rather than the perpetrator.”
The series takes some creative liberties, including changing the names of the victims and the genealogist, but it stays true to the core events of the case.
Unlike many true crime productions that focus heavily on the perpetrators, The Breakthrough shifts the spotlight to the victims and the investigators. It delves into the personal toll of the case on those involved and highlights the power of persistence and innovation in seeking justice.
The series also explores the ethical implications of forensic genealogy. While the technique proved invaluable in solving the Linköping murders and marked a turning point in European law enforcement, its use raises questions about privacy and the potential for misuse. These themes make The Breakthrough not just a gripping crime drama but also a thought-provoking look at the future of criminal investigations.
As genealogist Peter Sjölund’s groundbreaking work proved, even the most challenging mysteries can, with a little luck, be solved with dogged determination and a willingness to think outside the box.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is stepping down as the leader of the ruling Liberal Party, following months of pressure from partymates to resign amid increasingly poor public approval ratings.
“I intend to resign as party leader as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide competitive process,” Trudeau said at a press conference Monday morning.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The Globe and Mail first reported on Sunday that Trudeau would leave his party leadership post this week ahead of a key party caucus on Wednesday, citing three unnamed sources. (Reuters also reported Trudeau’s impending resignation, citing an unnamed source.) Those sources told the Canadian paper that it remains unclear if Trudeau will step down as Prime Minister immediately or stay on until a new party leader is selected.
Trudeau’s resignation comes before a federal parliamentary election that must happen by October 2025, but it can be held earlier if the House of Commons passes a motion of no-confidence to dissolve the incumbent Liberal government.
Trudeau’s nine-year tenure as Canadian Prime Minister has become tenuous, with two-thirds of Canadians disapproving of his performance, amid frustration over the cost of living and record immigration levels. The Liberal Party now trails the opposition Conservative Party by more than 20 percentage points and voter support hit a record low by the end of 2024.
The party does not hold an outright majority in Parliament and has relied on the backing of the more left-leaning New Democratic Party through a supply-and-confidence agreement, which the NDP dropped in September. The separatist Bloc Quebecois also dropped its support for the Liberals in October, with its leader saying it wanted to topple Trudeau’s government. These moves, along with recent losses in by-elections in formerly Liberal strongholds, pushed party members to hold a closed-door caucus meeting in late October in Ottawa, where they urged Trudeau to resign.
Pressure on Trudeau grew further following the Dec. 16 shock resignation of one of his closest allies, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, after he tried to demote her. In her resignation letter, Freeland accused Trudeau of “costly political gimmicks” over plans to cancel sales tax and hand out $250 checks for Christmas. Freeland said Canada needed to keep its “fiscal powder dry” ahead of a possible trade war amid Trump’s threat to slap a 25% tariff on all goods from Canada.
Trudeau has since shuffled his Cabinet, but the likelihood of elections being called sooner grew after NDP leader Jagmeet Singh issued a letter on Dec. 20 stating that his party “will vote to bring this government down” and put forward a motion of no-confidence. Canada’s Parliament is on winter break and is scheduled to resume on Jan. 27.
The Liberal Party constitution states that upon resignation, the party board of directors, in consultation with the caucus, should appoint an “interim leader.”
But time may not be on Liberals’ side in its selection of a replacement for Trudeau, with the incoming Trump administration and a looming general election. The party constitution states that nominees must submit nominations at least 90 days before a scheduled leadership vote. But it also states that the party board can change the date of a leadership vote and “alter any arrangements already made” if three-quarters of its voting members “determines that political circumstances require that the date be reset.”
Among the Liberal candidates who have been floated to potentially succeed Trudeau as party leader are Freeland; new Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc; Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly; Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne; and Transport and Internal Trade Minister Anita Anand.
Trudeau may also ask the Governor General Mary Simon, who represents the monarch in Canada, to prorogue—essentially pause—Parliament to delay a no-confidence vote, though such a move would likely face legal hurdles.
United States flags are set to be flown at half-staff this month as an official sign of grieving former President Jimmy Carter, who died on Dec. 29, 2024, aged 100. However, President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration day is set for later this month and he has expressed his discontent about the matter.
In President Joe Biden’s proclamation about the death of Carter, he directed that flags be flown at half-staff “as an expression of public sorrow” for 30 days—a period of time that includes President-elect Trump’s inauguration on Monday, Jan. 20.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The act is in accordance with a proclamation issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954, which states that when a President or former President dies, 30 days is the appropriate amount of time to fly the flag at half-staff at federal government buildings and their grounds, as well as at U.S. embassies and other facilities abroad, including military installations and vessels.
Biden’s proclamation also announced that Thursday, Jan. 9 would be a National Day of Mourning for the U.S., as a state funeral will be held that day at the Washington National Cathedral. Trump is expected to be in attendance. Ceremonies honoring Carter started on Jan. 4 with a procession in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. Carter will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from Jan. 7 to Jan. 9.
Read More: Jimmy Carter Was More Successful Than He Got Credit For
Upon learning of Carter’s death, Trump paid tribute via his social media platform, Truth Social. “While I strongly disagreed with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our Country, and all it stands for,” Trump said of Carter. “He worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my highest respect.”
Trump later posted on Truth Social, about the flags, saying that Democrats are “giddy” about the flag being flown at half-staff during his Inauguration.
“In any event, because of the death of President Jimmy Carter, the Flag may, for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half mast,” he wrote. “Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it. Let’s see how it plays out.”
The flags were flown at half-staff during President Richard Nixon’s inauguration for his second term on Jan. 20, 1973, due to him having lowered them earlier for the death of former President Harry S. Truman on Dec. 26, 1972.
During a press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if the White House would reconsider its decision to fly the flags at half-staff, in light of Trump’s raised concerns about his inauguration. Jean-Pierre replied with a firm “no.”
Read More: Donald Trump is TIME’s 2024 Person of the Year
After Trump is inaugurated, he could technically override Biden’s proclamation as President and raise the flags, an act that Nixon did for a single day in 1973 to honor the release of American prisoners of war in Vietnam. Though it was during a period of national mourning after the death of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon wrote that the short raising of the flag was in accordance with Johnson’s “highest respect and affection for the men in uniform who gave so much on the battlefields and in the prison camps.”
This is not the first time that Trump has been involved in discourse about flags being flown at half-staff. When Senator John McCain died in 2018, flags at some federal buildings were fully raised earlier than would normally be expected after the death of a Senator. After criticism, the flags were lowered again.
Beware of Blair. That’s the word from the Weather Channel, which, along with the National Weather Service, has issued a warning for the first named winter storm of 2025. The storm is set to arrive over the weekend and linger into Monday, clobbering the Plains, Midwest, and mid-Atlantic U.S. with snow, ice, and freezing temperatures—ensuring that the new year will land as a challenging one for up to 250 million people in 40 states.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Winter storm Blair is the result of what’s known as an Arctic Outbreak, which is itself a creature of the polar vortex. The polar vortex is a formation of westerly winds that collect over the Arctic in the winter, isolating the polar region from the surrounding atmosphere and causing temperatures within the vortex to plunge, but leaving surrounding temperatures unaffected. That’s only when the polar vortex remembers its place, however—which it’s not doing this weekend. Instead, a pair of high pressure areas are forcing the jet stream to plunge southward, bringing the icebox air of the polar vortex with them deep into the lower 48 states. At the same time, a so-called blocking high—a static area of high pressure—over Greenland is also forcing the jet stream, and more cold weather, southward.
The U.S. will feel the effects of all of this atmospheric activity dramatically. Throughout Saturday, snow is expected to hit the northern and central Rockies, along with the Plains, with precipitation likely extending as far south as the mid-Mississippi valley. The Weather Channel is warning Kansas City, St. Louis, and Wichita, Kansas, of hazardous driving conditions. Lake effect snow in states bordering the Great Lakes will add to the precipitation. On Sunday, the storm will stretch as far east as West Virginia and the Appalachian Mountains and south into Oklahoma. Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Louisville will be added to the cities that will face hazardous driving. By Monday, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charleston, S.C., and portions of West Virginia will get their turn to potentially be buried by snow. Accumulations across the affected areas are expected to reach between six and 12 inches.
Snowfall will taper and stop at the beginning of the week, but some models have the Arctic Outbreak lasting until the second half of the month, and that is when the majority of Americans should feel its effects. Even as early as Jan. 6., however, Texas and Oklahoma will see lows in the 20s and 30s; by midweek, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Appalachians could see similar temperatures. Local lows next week are projected to reach 23°F in Dallas, 33°F in New Orleans, 21°F in Atlanta, 36°F in Orlando, and 46°F in Miami. The Weather Channel calls for lows in some parts of the Plains, the mid-Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Valley to touch 0°F.
According to Accuweather, the cold air from the far north will arrive in pulses, with repeated blasts keeping much of the country below average temperatures. The Midwest and mid-Atlantic states are projected to be from 12°F to 25°F below historical averages throughout at least portions of the next two weeks. All five Gulf coast states—Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—may see snow and ice. A region extending 1,000 miles from western Nebraska to West Virginia could see up to three to six inches of snow, or “enough to shovel or plow,” says Accuweather. And the more snow that falls, the colder it will get, as the planet’s albedo—or reflectivity—increases, meaning that incoming sunlight bounces from the white ground back into space rather than being absorbed by darker surfaces and increasing warming.
None of this changes the state of the Earth’s overall climate. The planet is still running the meteorological fever known as climate change. But there is plenty of fluctuation within that larger condition. The first month of 2025 promises to be a reminder of winter’s more punishing extremes.
