Kelly Hereid

But main message that isn't getting through is that if you have to choose your building level mitigations - this says zone zero first, hands down. That's big news.

Feels like we've hit "bargaining" stage.

All around bad news for foundation garden lovers

Oh noo I've heard that too, "well if plants were just watered they won't burn!" 1, wildfires more common in drought when probably under watering restrictions anyway, but 2, just no.

Have you gotten tagged on the "native plants are ember catchers that will stop embers from reaching house!" one yet?

Bet it's going to make you *real* popular in Berkeley though... just starting on zone zero enforcement in high risk areas, but people really love their gardens here.

Yeah my jaw hit the floor when I saw difference in efficacy. If it holds it really makes me question the heavy building focus in CA - sure it helps a little, but putting gravel or a patio around your house is so much faster to deploy at scale.

Cc @michaelwara.bsky.social you'll be interested too.

I love xkcd

Eruptions Newsletter #23 for November 21, 2025 We're back in more ways than one with news from Semeru in Indonesia, the latest eruptions at Kīlauea and the viral malfunctioning seismometer at Mount Rainier.

The latest Eruptions newsletter is out. Inside: images/video from the eruption of Semeru in Indonesia, a deep dive into lahars on the anniversary of the Nevado del Ruiz tragedy and get grumpy about the terrible journalism surrounding Rainier's cranky seismometer eruptions.beehiiv.com/p/eruptions-...

New Model Enables Rapid Flood Prediction in Miami to Support Risk Management - NCCOS - National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science An NCCOS-supported research team developed a new model to rapidly simulate flood patterns in Miami, Florida, and better manage storm hazards. The model introduces a novel approach to represent the inf...

Nice write up of our recent work to address flood risk in Florida by @noaa.gov

coastalscience.noaa.gov/news/new-mod...

Ahhh yeah good call on duration, would be fun to link with RI driving those longer lived high cat storms too.

As you say, lots of ways to dig in.

We've used this so far for policy analysis (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...), capturing flood-risk dynamics (doi.org/10.1111/jfr3...), and isolating the effect of structure inventory errors on damage estimates (dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...).
Hopefully it is something that can be useful for you as well.

Our free and open source software for estimating property level flood risk under uncertainty now has a peer reviewed software paper!

We would love your thoughts for improvement and contributions! github.com/abpoll/unsafe

@jdossgollin.bsky.social @vsrikrish.bsky.social

I'd imagine getting a good sample size with high enough confidence in pre fire state probably a challenge for modeling, but it sure is intriguing enough to want to dive in more.

@gollnerfire.bsky.social am I missing a reason why y'all aren't shouting this result from the rooftops? Says to me that much cheaper veg mitigation is *way* more effective than expensive project of whole building retrofit.

Cc @cfarivar.bsky.social - also WAY drives up value of inspection services

Was digging through the supplementary data from the excellent study, as one does, and found the buried nugget that building survival increases from 20% to 40% with building hardening + zone zero... but you get to 37% with zone zero alone????

A bit of discussion whether the percentage of storms making landfall as hurricanes is static or not using counterfactual analysis. Thanks to a) modelling experts Reask and b) AI without which I wouldn't be able to produce pretty-looking graphs like this one.

oakreinsurance.com/news/hurrica...

Oh dang this is cool - in a sense really shows how unusual the drought was.

Have you tried splitting this up by genesis location at all? Not to go all "blame ENSO for everything" but La Niñas dropping storms in the CB may stick some interesting decadal variability in here, upping landfall prob...

Yeah, I think the problem is right for some interesting simulation exercises. A colleague and I did something a little bit similar a few years ago where we knocked out the peak flow from every USGS gauge in the country and then re-computed the FFA: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Aw dang, I hadn't seen this paper, this is really cool!

Also a *really* strong argument for making sure gages stay in place to collect that flood of record...

In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All The state aims to give children a better start, but faces supply and staffing concerns.

First state to do this, says @wsj.com. New Mexico expands free childcare (beginning at six weeks of age) to all incomes. Had been income limits before ($130,000 for family of four.)
www.wsj.com/us-news/in-a...

Hurricane Melissa produced the fastest hurricane winds to be recorded by a dropsonde, verified by reviewing data at NSF NCAR! Hurricane Melissa’s 252 mph wind gust surpassed the previous record from Typhoon Megi over the Western Pacific in 2010, where a dropsonde measured wind gusts of 248 mph.

Nothing immediately obvious comes to mind, although could visualize something like a long historical river gage where you run an extreme value fit to 100yr RP as you gradually add each annual peak and see how it varies as the record lengthens...

This is a terribly misunderstood point, even in insurance circles.

Our estimates of the 1 in 100 flood are almost always extrapolations and depend heavily on our assumptions and a few (or zero) real events. In most cases, the 'actual' 1:100 flood could be ~20% lower or higher (at least).

Parts of New Orleans Are Sinking - Eos Areas near the airport, along floodwalls, and in nearby wetlands are subsiding because of a combination of natural and anthropogenic forces.

Some of NOLA’s floodwalls are sinking.

eos.org/articles/par...

Read more in our year-end issue: bit.ly/Eos-Nov-Dec2025

Property Insurance and Disaster Risk: New Evidence from Mortgage Escrow Data Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Philip Mulder and I are excited to share a major update to our working paper, "Property Insurance and Disaster Risk: New Evidence from Mortgage Escrow Data," with NYT coverage and making our data publicly available!

www.nber.org/papers/w32579
(1/n)

Did you ever wonder what return period Atlas 14 would assign to this 5 min damp Tom Holland event if it were to occur in NE Ohio?

Well do I have the post for you...

66% of all solar and 69%(!) of all wind installed globally this year, will be installed in China🤯🇨🇳

I’m looking to hire a summer intern that’s interested in #climateris!. If you like natural hazards, finance, and tech this is a great team to be on

careers.moodys.com/insurance-ad...

Thank you NOAA for making this critical analysis possible.

Did you ever wonder what return period Atlas 14 would assign to this 5 min damp Tom Holland event if it were to occur in NE Ohio?

Well do I have the post for you...

As usual, you have a way of putting things that I hadn't really considered - so used to thinking of politics as an access topic but totally right that it applies to financial. Huh.