Good Deutsche-Velle explainer – 4 kinds of drought.
Meteorological Drought: Lower than average rain fall over 1 to 2 months.
Hydrological Drought: Not enough rain for at least 4 months
Agricultural Drought: When farming and plant growth are affected
Socio-Economic Drought: When infrastructure, supply chains, and societal structures are affected, ie cooling water for power plants, water rationing, food price impacts, political pressures.
Dan Chavas in The Conversation:
Violent tornado outbreaks, like the storms that tore through parts of St. Louis and London, Kentucky, on May 16, have made 2025 seem like an especially active, deadly and destructive year for tornadoes.
The U.S. has had more reported tornadoes than normal – over 960 as of May 22, according to the National Weather Service’s preliminary count.
That’s well above the national average of around 660 tornadoes reported by that point over the past 15 years, and it’s similar to 2024 – the second-most active yearover that same period.
Continue reading “2025 Tornadoes on a Tear”Project 2025’s FEMA makeover is a man made disaster.
Brandon Rogers fielded calls from as far away as Australia as his community strained to recover from the worst natural disaster ever to hit his slice of western North Carolina. Texts poured in by the hundreds. The influx kept the Haywood County commissioner and his staff busy as they coordinated an unimaginable humanitarian recovery.
The messages were distractions. Worse, actually: They were the budding flowers of misinformation, seeds that were planted just days after Hurricane Helene killed scores of people, destroyed entire towns and set western North Carolina on an uncertain, unwieldy path to rebuilding.
The hollers of western North Carolina are rather insular, with strong community ties owed in some equal measures to its mountainous geography, poor infrastructure and deep well of history. The storm hitting a place like that produced a greatest hits list of conspiracies: The Federal Emergency Management Agency wanted to push people off their land to access lithium deposits; then-President Joe Biden directed the storm to the Republican-heavy area; FEMA assistance was a loan that needed to be repaid at usurious rates.
Good local weather analysis from Houston station.
Government forecasters issued their first outlook for the upcoming 2025 hurricane season on Thursday.
Experts at NOAA and the National Weather Service that it operates – including forecasters from the National Hurricane Center – are signaling another active hurricane season on the horizon, predicting 13-19 named storms and 6-10 hurricanes across the Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean, with 3-5 becoming Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricanes.
On average 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 Category 3 or stronger hurricanes occur in a typical Atlantic hurricane season.
NOAA predicts a 60% chance of an above average hurricane season with only a 10% chance of a below average season.
Though above the long-term averages, the forecast is notably lower than in 2024 when experts issued their highest spring predictions since official hurricane outlooks beganalmost 30 years ago.
Gave a presentation in a small town in Northern Michigan last week. A woman raised her hand and told me her home insurance had gone up 30 percent from last year.
Same story from a relative in Milwaukee.
It’s not just Florida and California.
A new study found a typical Illinois single-family homeowner paid almost $1,000 more for home insurance in 2024 compared with three years earlier, a jump of about 50%, making it the second-highest increase in the country.
The average cost last year for $350,000 worth of replacement coverage from one of the six major insurers in Illinois was $2,942, up from $1,968 in 2021, according to a nationwide analysis of insurance rate data by the Consumer Federation of America. The nonprofit examined rates for $350,000 replacement value policies for customers with a credit score of about 740.
In the Chicago metro area, the cost for that level of coverage increased by 46% over the same three-year period, with average annual costs rising from $1,964 to $2,876, the study found.
States like Florida and Louisiana saw higher prices for home insurance, but the rate of increase in Illinois raises concerns about affordability in a state that’s far away from hurricanes and wildfires, the study’s authors said.
Utah was No. 1, with premiums rising an average of 59%. Arizona ranked third at 48% followed by Pennsylvania at 44%.
But prices are rising all around the country, with increases hitting homeowners in about 95% of U.S. ZIP codes. The study also estimated that American homeowners collectively paid about $21 billion more for home insurance in 2024 than in 2021.
Continue reading “Not Just Florida: Home Insurance Hikes Hit Heartland Hard”
Don’t think of an elephant.
And don’t think about the increasing costs of natural disasters.
Project 2025 has the solution for a spiking weather disasters.
Just months after fires devastated parts of Los Angeles, one of the leading home insurers in California, State Farm, is temporarily raising rates 17 percent.
The sharp jump, after a 20 percent rate increase last year, is sure to strain family finances in what is already one of the nation’s most expensive states for home insurance.
It is also just the latest example of the indirect but increasingly costly ways that climate change is affecting the American economy.
An insurance crisis is spreading across the country as extreme weather and rising seas batter homes and businesses. As Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul reported throughout last year, insurance companies are pulling back coverage, homeowners are paying more and states are struggling to prop up an industry that is tottering as the planet rapidly heats up.
Continue reading “More Bad News for Home Insurance”