Yep, Mo' Rain

A stalled/blocked frontal boundary to the west and big, blocking Bermuda High off the coast and we continue to have streams of moisture slung up the eastern seaboard bringing more and more rain. The torrential downpours have not really occurred here (there have been plenty just to the west) but just enough rain, off and on with nasty humidity to make it not a enjoyable atmosphere to wade through. That coupled with the wholesale slaughter of the forest adjacent to me did not make for a pleasant walk yesterday, late or today. What goes for forest management in this country (and around the world) is both disgusting and sad and potentially tragic for our species, not to mention the lifeforms living in the forests. Jared Diamond's book, Collapse, breaks things down pretty simply: don't want to survive, first cut down all the trees and then overpopulate. We as a species are well on our way to doing both.
Temperate forest management (that's kinda like highway engineering and military intelligence) will have us with only loblolly pine whereas in the tropics it will only be palm oil and bananas. Nice choices for a future. Current warming trends will likely take out coffee, cacao and tea trees in the near future and then where will we get our caffeine and chocolate??!!(from chemical labs) Hardwoods will be gone and without rain forests in the tropics to regulate world temps and moisture levels Earth will not be a nice place. Perhaps surviving humans will enjoy their new neighbors: pigeons, rats, coyotes, cockroaches and other mutated insects. Perhaps we won't survive and the current reality will just carry on, the bacteria and viruses are still really in charge.
With that lovely picture painted, 2 dozen volcanoes are on the active list this week and only 2 are showing heat or seismic anomalies, the rest are belching a variety of hot gasses and rocks into the atmosphere and onto adjacent countrysides. A big quake (6.4) and eruption in central Indonesia killed several and caused significant damage over the weekend. Kilauea is still going at it in Hawaii (but with our idiot "president" constantly drawing attention to himself to try and deflect attention from the fact he's complete traitorous slime the news has moved on from something as trivial as a volcano) and the Ring O Fire around the Pacific has volcanoes (and quakes) from Vanuatu around to Peru with few gaps in between, an eruptive week. Italian volcanoes have at least least calmed down and there have been no quakes lately in the Yellowstone region.
For those with clear, dark skies, the planet show continues and after complete darkness (also in limited supply on earth - unless you are in North Korea or the Australian outback) the Milky Way, our galaxy, appears as a milky swath across the dome of the sky. Look for it passing through the Summer Triangle which includes Deneb, the bright tail of  Cygnus the swan(aka. the Northern Cross) flying overhead along the Milky Way seemingly headed to the center of the galaxy in Sagittarius, which is where golden Saturn is hanging out these days. Not holding my breath for cloud-free skies around here, more likely, mo' rain.
But, even though there is mayhem and idiocy all around, it's still not a bad planet; best one we know of, so get out and check it out, Today on Earth.