No Catastrophe Too Small

Houston wasn’t supposed to be this hot in June. Nevertheless, as the American Society for Microbiology convened its annual meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center, a sprawling glass-and-white-aluminum complex on the edge of downtown, the city recorded its first 100 degree day — a whole month earlier than normal. This was the first of 45 days of triple-digit temperatures for Houston in 2023, only one day short of the all-time record of 46 consecutive days in 2011. This extreme heat event was a fitting backdrop for the society’s first session of a newly named but growing field: disaster microbiology, the science of anything-but-normal.

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