We, the editorial team at Global Traveler, just wrapped up February’s issue yesterday with the usual flurry of last-minute shuffling of advertising pages, final copy and layout. To an outsider, the last few days of each publishing cycle might appear chaotic, but editor in chief Lisa Matte always has a calm and steady hand on it all. Earlier in the week, it looked as though the snowstorm which struck the Northeast had the potential to really throw us off our game. I sat in my home office in Oregon taking in all the news stories about the snow piling up all up and down the East Coast, wondering at the lack of email in my inbox. Were my GT associates simply working through a backlog of final stories before sending them on to me, or were they sitting in chilled homes in front of black computer screens waiting for the power to come back on? Thankfully, none of them lost power, and although our work was not significantly or immediately affected by the latest round of snowstorms there, once again the weather created huge disruptions to business and travel, loss of revenue in the millions and, most tragically, the injury and deaths of scores of people. But the weather woes here in the States pales in comparison to the flooding seen in Queensland, Australia, and Brazil over the past week. As reported in the January 13th issue of GT‘s eFlyer Asia newsletter, the Australian floods have actually stretched out for more than a month; and the effects on agriculture, tourism and other businesses have been devastating. Hundreds of lives have been lost in Brazil, while literally hundreds of thousands in both countries have had to evacuate their homes and seen their livelihoods destroyed by the roiling brown waters and mudslides. News such as that makes my heart ache for all those affected. It certainly puts into perspective the slight inconveniences and delays in work and travel I might experience in my life due to weather. — Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor