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Probably not, but it’s understandable why so many people hope so

We’re well into the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season and storm trackers are closely watching one now forming near Cape Verde, off the west coast of Africa, that may become the next big storm. It just so happens that the next tropical storm to be named will be called Dolly, which is entirely a coincidence and has nothing to do with philanthropist and singer Dolly Parton's untimely death this week at age 80. That’s totally a World Meteorological Organization thing, which comes up with the names for tropical cyclones, rotating them out every six years and retiring them after a given storm causes too much destruction. After all, it would be kinda weird to ever see another Hurricane Katrina. Earlier this year we had tropical storms Arthur, Bertha and Cristobal. (I think you can see a pattern there.)

So next up is Dolly, meaning there's a non-zero chance the storm strengthens into Hurricane Dolly, heads straight for Palm Beach and levels Mar–a-Lago, which would have obvious implications for our commander in chief. At the moment, there is no evidence to suggest such a thing is going to happen and again, the odds are pretty low. Still, judging by trends on social media, it seems a lot of people are tickled by the idea that such an outcome is even remotely possible. 

I can’t count myself excited about it, knowing that the collateral damage would likely be massive. But people love that kind of cosmic irony and I understand where they’re coming from. I don’t want to check, but I’m sure everyone’s favorite betting apps will offer odds on this event, though even Polymarket and Kalshi may know better than to piss off the president. 

Giving storms human-style names is arguably a weird relic that is bound to create some chatter whenever this kind of overlap occurs, but storms used to be named after Catholic saints, politicians and figures from Polynesian mythology, so it could be weirder. The U.S. military used to give them code names. Who wants to be hit by a Hurricane Easy? But that happened in 1950, indirectly killing two people. 

Last year, exactly zero hurricanes hit the U.S. mainland, which is kind of a bizarre blessing, but we’ve had dead-quiet hurricane seasons before. (But Caribbean nations like Jamaica were absolutely pummeled by Hurricane Melissa in 2025, so it wasn’t all positive.) This year, we’ll be lucky to avoid collision with a massive, destructive storm. Here’s where I tap the climate change sign and remind folks we’re still burning fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate as oil and gas companies rake in obscene profits, even as renewable energy goes increasingly mainstream. Those emissions are making our oceans hotter and our atmosphere able to hold more water, producing the ingredients for a really bad hurricane, no matter where it makes landfall, Palm Beach or Pittsburgh.

But it might actually be the other side of the continent where we need to focus our attention right now. As the New York Times reported a few weeks ago, “thanks to El Niño, the Pacific Ocean faces a higher than normal risk of hurricanes this year — increasing the likelihood that a major storm will break from this predictable path and strike California, Mexico or Hawaii, federal meteorologists have warned.” 

Indeed, Hurricane Lala was just such a devastating and anomalous storm that swept past Hawaii earlier in August, becoming the first hurricane in 155 years to directly hit the Big Island since an unnamed hurricane in 1871, despite never officially making landfall. A record wind gust of 140 miles per hour was recorded on the peak of Mauna Kea, while across the state more than 100 homes were damaged or destroyed by cataclysmic flooding, killing three people. Over two days, the deluge was equivalent to nearly two million Olympic-size pools of water. Talk about weird weather that the name Lala doesn’t even come close to reflecting. 

The reason why Hurricane Lala was so strange and violent has a lot to do with the record-breaking El Niño, which is a normal pattern of climate variation tied to wind and sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific. But combined with climate change, El Niño is becoming supercharged, which is why this year is likely to be the hottest in recorded human history. Just a few days ago, sea surface temperatures hit the warmest level ever recorded, literally pushing off the charts. We can expect a lot more extreme weather disasters, including hurricanes, droughts and floods, as a result.

Yes, the ultimate irony would be to see our climate change-denying president’s dumb little resort getting swept out to sea, assuming no bystanders were injured. But that’s a lot of big ifs stuffed into a trenchcoat, parading around social media as an inevitability. When it seems like harmless fun, my motto is to let people enjoy it. Given what Dolly Parton stood for and what our president doesn’t, it might almost seem like her ghost seeking vengeance, despite Trump’s insistence that she actually liked him. In fact there’s no evidence that Parton, who carefully avoided politics, was a MAGA fan and far more clues pointing in the opposite direction. To borrow an old Bill McKibben bit, maybe we should start naming hurricanes after fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil or Saudi Aramco. Would seeing your house flattened by Hurricane Shell wake people up? I’d suggest Hurricane Donny, but we’ve already been drowning in that one for far too long. —Troy Farah

What do you think? Would a Hurricane Dolly be divine justice or something else? Leave us a comment, send me a note with your thoughts at [email protected] or say hello on Bluesky.

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