If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget it. This is real astrology. See the section above. Please note: all forecasts and corresponding results are expressed in terms of Universal Time (UT). Current UT date and time appear at the top of this page. (To update display, use your browser's reload/refresh button.) 

ANTEBLUE MOON TOLL

I predicted "strong storms, flooding and moderate to severe seismic activity (including Richter 5 or greater quakes and volcanic eruptions) between February 27 and March 5," coinciding with the March 2 Anteblue Moon. As usual, this one delivered. On the seismic front, the USGS National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) recorded a total of 17 Richter 5 or greater quakes during this period, including a killer 6.2 temblor that rocked southern Iran on Thursday the 4th. One person died and more than 500 homes were damaged in that earthquake, which was followed by a number of aftershocks, a couple of them in excess of Richter 5. On Thursday the 4th, a magnitude 6.1 quake rocked the southern Philippines. Noting that "Mars squares the January 31 eclipse points on the 6th," I advised figuring that "the danger zone stretches out an extra day on this one." As it turned out, there were a couple more Richter 5+ quakes on the 6th, including a 5.4 that struck the Fiji Islands. And then there were the volcanoes: Indonesia banned tourists from the Krakatoa volcano on the 4th as activity increased there, and on the 3rd Mexico deployed troops to help with evacuations around the increasingly restive Popocatepetl volcano.

There was no dearth of activity in the way of devastating storms and such during this period. Beginning on the 26th, Sao Paulo Brazil (one of the target countries I specified) was inundated by the worst floods to hit the city in five years: at least two dozen people died, and ore than 10,000 were left homeless. On the 2nd, officials in Hungary were reporting that nation as "struggling with some of the century's worst flooding." Over a half million acres in the country's eastern farming region were flooded out. Eastern Europe was one of the target zones I specified as most at risk during this period, you will recall. So was the Pacific Northwest, which got nailed by a powerful storm on the 3rd. More than a quarter million customers were without power, as winds in excess of 80 mph felled trees and power lines from Vancouver BC down to Portland OR. The US Sun Belt took a hit on the 2nd and 3rd, as tornadoes ripped a path of destruction from Texas eastward to Alabama. One man died in Alabama when high winds smashed a tree into his mobile home, crushing the homeowner as he slept. Four people were injured in east Texas, where more than two dozen homes were damaged in the storm. The tornadoes tore into Cuba on the 4th, leaving two people dead in their wake. Western New York was deluged with more than two feet of snow on the 4th, prompting Governor Pataki to declare 17 counties a disaster area. Meanwhile, literally half-way 'round the world, tropical cyclone Davina swirled to life southwest of Sumatra on the 1st . . . flash floods took at least four lives in Mozambique, where heavy rains triggered by Davina overflowed rivers and collapsed bridges over the weekend of FEB 27-28.

MERCURY RETRO & MURPHY'S LAW

I mentioned that the Mercury retrograde starting "on the 10th" would usher in "the usual slapstick Mercury retro comedy of errors: messages lost, misrouted or misplaced; communication breakdowns and full-Homer (d'oh!) lapses of attention and focus; transportation tie-ups that cause shipping and travel delays." These would continue at least "until April 2" and could last up 'til "April 21, when Mercury once again reaches the point where its retrograde started." Sure enough, Murphy's Law began breaking out all over right on schedule . . .

The whole Murphy's Law schtick started right on schedule on the 10th, when Microsoft acknowledged a security flaw in its flagship Windows NT operating system. And then there was the blackout that hit a large part of Brazil (and part of neighboring Paraguay) on the 11th: 55 million people were without power for a time. Next on the 12th, a gyroscope problem in a communications satellite serving all of North America disrupted wire services and TV networks for almost six hours. While the satellite company was able to re-route some of the network traffic almost immediately, some network and news feeds suffered outages that ran hours long.

Of course, as I said, there's a positive side to Mercury retrograde; namely that it's "a good time to back-track, figure out what went wrong, fix it, and then try to catch up." Which is exactly what Iomega started doing with respect to its popular Jaz external computer drives on March 11. Seems the power supply to these popular storage peripherals can pose a fire hazard. Iomega's doing it up right, however: a free replacement power supply is yours for the asking if you own a Jaz drive.

Another example of a Mercury retrograde fix-up is the freeware email program called ProMail, distributed free for the downloading over the Web since it was introduced on February 24. (Remember that date!) ProMail, as it turns out, is a Trojan Horse: use the thing, and it steals your password, user name, email address and other goodies and sends them off to an account at NetAddress. The dirty little Trojan Horse secret was the subject of an MSNBC online report on March 23, during the Mercury retrograde. That retrograde ends on April 2, when Mercury reaches back to 21 Pisces - which is where it was on February 24, when the ProMail Trojan horse was set loose on an unsuspecting world.

By far the biggest of the communication snafus to mess with email and the Internet during this particular Mercury retrograde was the infamous Melissa virus. First released on Friday, March 26, by Monday the 29th Melissa had become "the most widespread" virus ever to hit the Internet. Some companies were forced to shut down their electronic mail systems, others crashed outright, and the FBI's cybercrime unit moved quickly to investigate Melissa. (A similar virus named Papa burst on the scene Monday as well.) CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team, estimated that Melissa affected more than 100,000 computers. Ironically, it was on April 2nd – the very day Mercury turned direct – that the FBI arrested computer programmer David Smith on charges of creating the Melissa virus.

MARS-PLUTO RETROS: PEOPLE HURT, THINGS BROKEN

What with Pluto going retrograde on the 13th, and Mars following suit on the 18th, I warned you about 'Holy wars' as well as "oil spills, crimes against tourists and other travelers far from home . . . terrorist atrocities and other vicious crimes, evil stuff cooked up in a home lab, accidents, explosions . . . all in all a good time to watch your back and steer clear of places where trouble is likely to strike, if you can. But if you're sitting there at your radar screen trying to spot the cruises and F-117s coming in, forget it." As March draws to a close and we look back at the Kosova 'ethnic cleansing' massacres and the NATO air strikes . . . well, I think it's clear that my forecast delivered the details well in advance. Mars no sooner went retrograde on March 18 than the Kosovar delegation signed off on the Paris accord. From that day forward, the NATO attack on Yugoslavia was inevitable. (The Serbs were warned by the US State Department that if they refused to sign and the Kosovars did, then NATO would bomb Yugoslavia.) And so this ungodly 'holy war' – Christian Serbs against Moslem Kosovars – burst into a crisis that now threatens not only the parties themselves, but all of Europe. The cruise missiles and F-117s are wreaking havoc all over Yugoslavia, hitting targets right downtown in Belgrade . . . even as the Serbs have driven out the better part of the entire Moslem population of Kosova. And three American GIs - Spec. Steven M. Gonzales and Staff Sgts. Christopher Stone and Andrew Ramirez - became the first US troops held as POWs by Yugoslavia, having been abducted on March 31. While I have no birth data whatsoever on Stone and Ramirez, I have enough on Spec. Gonzales to show you his untimed natal chart. I'm guessing at his place of birth, using Palestine TX because a CNN report stated that he grew up there. It's an assumption on my part, but regardless it gives you some idea of what his natal planetary positions are like. This preliminary chart features a Mars-Neptune square, and lots of other hard aspects: Sun-Moon square, Mercury-Saturn-Uranus T-square (in fixed signs, now heavily transited), Venus-Pluto opposition . . .

When I predicted that March would see "danger, conflict and controversy surrounding world leaders and nations with significant fixed sign emphasis in their charts," and mentioned "Japan and Israel, Clinton, Yeltsin and Blair, Saddam and Castro" as "the usual suspects," I didn't have Slobodan Milosevic's birth data. I still don't have his time of birth. It's what data diva Lois Rodden calls "dirty data" (DD), because there are several reported birth times for the Yugoslavian President. (Lois reports that she has "the date with various times of 3:20 AM, 2:30 AM and 10:00 PM, the customary assortment, usually listed as from 'mutual friend,' 'his mother,' 'a reliable source.'") But even from the untimed birth data (AUG 20, 1941 in Pozarevac, Yugoslavia) published in his official biography – see the biography section of Astropro's NetSelect Directory for the online rundown – it's plain that he too falls in that 'significant fixed sign emphasis' category, what with his Sun-Mercury conjunction in Leo square Saturn in Taurus. (Both are fixed signs, of course: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius are the four fixed signs.)

There were notable accidents making headlines during this period, as predicted . . . like the train wreck in Kenya that claimed more than thirty lives on the 24th. That same day in the Mt. Blanc tunnel between France and Italy, several dozen people burned to death in a fiery truck explosion.

A REAL NEW MOON RUMBLE

As predicted, the March 14-20 new moon period brought "a bigger than usual batch of strong storms, floods, and seismic action (including volcanic outbursts and Richter 5 or greater quakes) . . . This particular storm and seismic shock window," as I said, "gets stretched out another 30 hours or so by the March 20 lunar perigee." So the entire seismic and meteorological shock window in this case ran from the 14th into the 22nd.

It started right on schedule when a winter storm rolled across the Missouri Ozarks on Sunday the 14th, dumping two feet of snow while passing through. The storm moved into the US East Coast Sunday night into Monday, bringing snow, sleet, ice and rain from the Ohio Valley up to Massachusetts. More than 100,000 people were without power across the region for most of the 15th, due to snow-snapped power lines. A strange and tragic weather story unfolded in Nigeria on the 16th, when a family hired a local rainmaker named Rasaq to avert a storm threatening the burial party for a relative. Rasaq climbed up on a roof and implored the thunder god Sango to hold off – and was promptly struck dead by lightning.

Thunder gods seem to have been on a rampage in various parts of the world that week. Eleven people were killed by lighting in Vietnam and eight more in central China, as severe thunderstorms pounded Asia. China's Guangdong province was especially hard-hit on the 18th, when a tornado tore through a harbor and wiped out a third of the fishing boats there – the sole means of income for many of the residents. A torrential downpour accompanied the storm, inundating the area. Another severe storm struck northeastern Bolivia on the 20th. At least 1,000 local residents were left homeless as heavy floods triggered by the storm submerged towns along the Beni River.

By far the biggest weather story during this period would turn out to be Tropical Cyclone Vance, which formed off the northwestern coast of Australia on Thursday the 18th. (Tropical Cyclone Elaine whirled to life not far away just two days before and struck the town of Moora on the 20th: some 2,000 people had to be evacuated in the resulting floods.) Vance ripped into Australia on the 22nd, as this storm shock window was winding down. At that point a category five storm, Vance hit the town of Exmouth with 166 mph winds. About a third of the town was damaged or destroyed in what was called the strongest storm to hit Australia since Tropical Cyclone Tracy's Christmas Eve strike on Darwin in 1974.

Eleven Richter 5 or greater quakes were recorded by the USGS National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) in the March 14-20 new moon period alone. Another struck on the 21st , as the lunar perigee window was winding down. Strongest of the lot was the 6.8 temblor that rocked Andreanof Island in the Aleutians on the 20th, the day the lunar perigee was exact. But the 6.0 quake that hit Hokkaido on the 18th wasn't far behind. Mexico's Popocatepetl got into the act during this new moon period as well, erupting on the 15th and again on the 18th and 19th.

BLUE MOON BLUSTER

The "up-tick in floods, strong storms and moderate to severe seismic action (volcanic eruptions and Richter 5 or greater quakes)" I predicted for the period "from the 27th through April 2nd" delivered as advertised – and then some. On the seismic front, 20 Richter 5 or greater quakes were recorded by the USGS NEIC during this Blue Moon period, including a total of four Richter 6 or higher temblors. One of these struck the lower Indian Himalayas on the 28th, killing more than 100 people and injuring several hundred more. (The Indian quake was rated a 6.6 by the USGS, as high as 6.8 in news accounts.) More than a dozen villages were reported completely destroyed in the Himalayan quake. Africa's Mount Cameroon volcano got into the act during this Blue Moon as well, with an eruption that began on the evening of the 27th. By the 28th, lava was flowing down the slopes of the 13,428-foot volcano. The Cameroon government issued evacuation orders on the 30th, forcing 300 villagers in the lava's path to flee their homes. Two new fissures opened up on April 2nd, bringing the total number of cracks feeding the lava flow to twelve. Government sources estimate that 2,500 people have been affected by the new round of eruptions, the first since 1982. More than 100 homes have been damaged or destroyed since March 27th.

And then there were the storms, like the cyclone (christened Frederic) that formed in the Indian Ocean on the 28th; the freakish spring snowstorms that pounded the northern Plains and turned 100+ mph winds loose in Arizona on April 1st. Eight people froze to death in the San Diego Mountains along the California-Mexico border that night, as snow blanketed the area.