A true American Icon died this week. While I wasn’t a major fan of Dolly Parton’s music, I definitely enjoyed some of her songs, particularly Jolene. I will have more on that later in this piece. I also appreciated what Dolly Parton meant to the world. She was talented, compassionate, and gave back to others vigorously. According to media reports , Parton died after a brief battle with cancer. She had humble beginnings in the mountains of Tennessee and went on to change the world. Ironically, a tropical system with humble beginnings over the Ethiopian Highlands of Africa could become the next named storm of the Atlantic hurricane system. Its name would be Dolly.

The National Hurricane Center is currently watching an area of low pressure associated with a tropical wave. The system is located a few hundred miles south-southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands. Those islands should sound familiar if you watched FIFA World Cup soccer this summer. “Environmental conditions remain somewhat favorable for development over the next couple of days, and a tropical depression is likely to form over the next day or two as the system moves westward to west-northwestward across the eastern and central tropical Atlantic,” wrote NHC forecasters.

The NHC forecasters give the system a 70 percent chance of further development within the next few days. If the system develops further develops to a tropical storm. It would become the fourth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. The next name on the predetermined list is Dolly. “Environmental conditions are forecast to become less favorable by this weekend, potentially ending its chances for development,” NHC forecasters went on to say, so it is not a given that we will get Tropical Storm Dolly with this next storm.

If it does form, it will have to overcome very harsh conditions in terms of atmospheric conditions. Parton also overcame poverty to develop into a generational icon. “One imagines Parton, who told the crowd her family had running water ‘if we ran and got it,’ absorbed her wit and natural poetry from her mother’s language,” wrote Sarah Smarsh in Slate back in 2020. In that masterful essay about the rural poverty that shaped Dolly Parton, Smarsh also reflected on how Parton influenced people well beyond the country music genre or the mountains of Tennessee.

Beyonce, an icon in her own right, covered Parton’s classic song “Jolene.” One of her lasting legacies will be Imagination Library , which the famed singer started in 1995 in Sevier County, Tennessee. The program has grown well beyond that county and provides free books to kids in the U.S. and abroad, irrespective of income or social status. Parton also made significant donations to Vanderbilt University to fight COVID-19 in 2020. She even used royalties from the success of Whitney Houston’s version of her song, “I Will Always Love You,” to invest in Black communities in Nashville, Tennessee."

It’s rare to find a person like Dolly Parton today. Social media, politics, race, sexual preferences and places of birth continue to drive wedges between people. Dolly skillfully transcended these divides and was genuinely beloved by everyone. That’s a special trait, and one that we can all learn from.

If Tropical Storm Dolly forms this year, and one eventually will I suspect, then it is a fitting and coincidental salute to Dolly Parton. Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the southeastern U.S. including southern Appalachia. D.K. Wall posted a song called “Helene” in the tune of Parton’s song “Jolene.” The song “Jolene” was written from the perspective of a woman begging another woman to leave her man alone. Wall was focused on a hurricane.

“Here in Asheville and the surrounding mountains, we’re expecting a foot or more of rain. If that happens, we will see severe flooding of creeks and valleys, fallen trees, and power outages. The worst will be the landslides which can be sadly common during a tropical system,” Wall wrote on his website leading up to the devastation. “Despite the seriousness of the situation, I woke this morning with Dolly Parton’s classic “Jolene” rattling in my brain, only it was an ode to Hurricane Helene. With my deepest apologies (and much respect) to Dolly, I present… Helene.”

Even in that moment of despair, Parton’s words gave temporary comfort.