The brief description of the news system set for tomorrow is that it lists "galactic weather." Is this just made up stuff to make the game more realistic ("Bractus IV is suffering from sand storms") , or is it like "Ion storms have been reported in Bractus L3"?

I have the impression it's stuff like "Ion storm in such and such sector" from reading other threads. But we don't have to wait too much longer to find out.

i hate ion storms.......

Me too, I just hope we can plot multi-point courses around them too.

Oh, and you can tell that the Devs are working hard on this because they haven't updated the in progress page for a couple weeks :)

There was no need to update the In Progress. Scroll down a little and you will see the plan for each week in the near future has been laid out for you. They aren't behind in updating it because they planned ahead. They are current through 11/29.