Category 6?

Oh, my God!!!!!!!

Hurricane Patricia has hit Mexico and at one point was packing winds of about two hundred miles an hour - it's completely off the charts! - as it made landfall.  it was a tropical storm that grew into a Category 5 hurricane with frightening rapidity - in about 36 hours - and it's the most powerful storm ever recorded in this part of the world.  Only Asian typhoons have been deadlier.

Patricia is also the twenty-second tropical system above Category 3 to form in the Northern Hemisphere in 2015, which is also the greatest number ever recorded.  Now, can any Republican not named Lindsey Graham tell me this has nothing to do with climate change?

Ironies abound with this storm, to say the least, among them being that it's weakened as rapidly as it strengthened now that it's gone well inland (it's a tropical storm now), though the damage it's done should still be fairly significant.  And although it's a Pacific hurricane, its remnants are likely to affect the American Northeast.  The rain in the Northeast won't be bad, but the long-term effects of Patricia could be felt this winter; its strength could alter the global climate enough to make the winter of 2015-16 colder than originally forecast in many locales, negating the moderating effect of El Niño on winter temperatures.  And here's the mother of all ironies; Patricia drew its strength from warm Pacific waters caused by . . . El Niño.

If you still don't believe in climate change, that ought to have quieted you down.