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A CNN panel was "surprised" by Vice President Kamala Harris struggling to respond to a question about how she would differ from President Biden on policy.

It's the prime time to restock your underwear drawer.

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Save over $600, or up to 39%, on the sleek and chic Frame TV for Prime Big Deal Days.

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People in Treasure Island, Florida, continue to clean up from Hurricane Helene on October 7, 2024, as preparations are made for Hurricane Milton’s arrival. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images Just weeks ago, Hurricane Helene devastated multiple states in the southeastern US. Over 230 people were killed because of the storm, and that number is likely to go up as the search for missing people continues. Entire homes, streets, and towns across the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida have been torn apart. Plans for rebuilding are bound to be a slow struggle. Now, Florida is primed to face disaster once again — before it’s even had a fair chance at recovering from the last one.  On Wednesday night, Hurricane Milton, currently a Category 4 storm, will make landfall on Florida’s west coast. While forecasters say it’s likely to weaken a bit before reaching Florida, government officials are ordering millions of people in over a dozen counties to evacuate. “I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” said Tampa Mayor Jane Castor.  The Tampa Bay area, in particular, is in serious trouble. The land is prone to flooding and storm surges caused by hurricane season. Most recently, Hurricane Helene caused record storm surges for the city. But now, this region may be right in Milton’s path. The last time a hurricane hit the area directly was 1921 — it demolished homes and killed eight people. Back then, Tampa Bay was home to 65,000 people. Today, the population is 3.1 million. While the exact location of where Milton will make landfall is still uncertain, even on the day of its arrival, it’s clear that there is much, much more to lose this time around. The back-to-back phenomena between Hurricanes Helene and Milton spells out disaster for communities in Florida that just barely started to rebuild and recover from Helene’s damage. As Hurricane Milton imminently approaches, coastal residents and their local governments are scrambling to move the heaps of debris off the streets, which can become dangerous projectiles if swept up by the coming storm, which is currently forecasted to make landfall as a Category 4. (Hurricane Katrina, for example, made landfall as a Category 3). Some towns are still getting back up on their feet from when Hurricane Debby, a large Category 1 storm that wreaked havoc by continuously dumping heavy rain over parts of Florida and flooded towns, hit back in August.  Florida is no stranger to extreme weather, or even weather disasters happening one after the other. But all of the above context makes this situation feel terrifyingly different. “You could call it unprecedented, because you can take a similar meteorological setup, a similar tropical magnitude hurricane in a similar physical environment, but with more people and infrastructure — that is not something we have necessarily seen in the more recent, modern time,” says Emily Powell, the assistant state climatologist for the Florida Climate Center and program manager of the Florida Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) Program. I spoke in depth with Powell to better understand the gravity of the situation and how communities are confronting this uniquely destructive moment for the millions of people in Milton’s path. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Sam Delgado I know you’re based in Florida, it’s where you do your work. How are you feeling as Milton is getting closer to making landfall? Emily Powell Milton is projected to cause more destruction, more storm surge, higher storm surge levels, potentially higher rainfall rates in places along the west Gulf Coast of Florida. These are places along the coast that will see really high, high levels of storm surge that we have not seen in those places in a long time.  Helene brought storm surges of between 6 and 7 feet roughly, in the west central parts of Florida. And we’re projecting to see upwards of 15 feet in some places, and so much higher levels of storm surge. I think we’ve seen people being very responsive so far to this threat. People are evacuating. It sounds like there’s been a lot of congestion in traffic, which means people are listening and heeding warnings, which is good news and I hope that that continues to happen today. We have more time to prepare, and I think people are getting sandbags, getting their places secured, and hopefully finding safer places to ride the storm out.  Sam Delgado Florida just got through Hurricane Helene barely a week and a half ago, and some communities are still recovering from Hurricane Debby’s impact two months ago. Now, the state is bracing for Hurricane Milton’s arrival. What is it like on the ground right now for people in Milton’s path, in this sort of in-between moment? Emily Powell I was down in Steinhatchee end of last week, and so Steinhatchee had a direct hit from Helene, and that was their third storm in 13 months in that particular part of the coast, and in Steinhatchee, Keaton Beach, and Cedar Key, and then places further south that are projected to see a direct hit from Milton, people are very much still in response and recovery. In Steinhatchee — and this looked very similar last year after Hurricane Idalia — if you drive up and down the streets, you see piles and piles of debris, trash, the insides of people’s homes on the curb, some places, and so all that is still in the process of being cleaned up. What we’re seeing right now is sort of emergency preparations to remove and clean up and dispose of all that debris, get it out of the streets where that could become a hazard as the storm approaches and makes landfall. In addition to that, some people were still without power. I think Steinhatchee actually was at roughly 85 percent power restoration. I think where power can be restored, it has been restored following Helene, but there might be instances where a particular home or building cannot receive power because of damages to that particular structure.  Unfortunately, we’re just having to hit pause and shift gears to prepare for this next landfalling hurricane, and then more recovery and cleanup. Sam Delgado How did Milton take shape so quickly after Helene? Emily Powell This season, in addition to the last Atlantic hurricane season, the waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, as well as in the main development region of the tropical Atlantic Ocean basin, have been incredibly warm, much warmer than normal. And in some places, record warm, and so that is one factor that contributed to a really aggressive hurricane season forecast this year is the record warm water temperatures.  So here in the Gulf, about this time in the hurricane season, we tend to see more development in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, as opposed to out in the tropical Atlantic basin. So it’s not very uncommon to see a lot of activity in this part of the basin at this time of year. Because the waters have been so warm, storms like Milton have been able to spin up really, really quickly. When we have other conditions conducive to that, developments like low vertical wind shear, we see explosive intensification as we did with Milton. It has just been in an environment in the western Gulf of Mexico that has been very conducive to this very rapid intensification. These back-to-back storms are not necessarily uncommon. We’ve seen that in many other seasons, like 2020, we’ve seen places get hit again and again, it has to do with the atmospheric patterns that are also in play that are helping to steer the storms.  Sam Delgado What do these two storms happening back to back underscore and say about the types of disasters we’re going to see in a world impacted by climate change? Emily Powell Unfortunately, we’ve seen this happen before. It’s not unprecedented, but it does speak to the fact that no one is really immune or safe to these storms.  We have seen a lot of studies show that there’s been a trend toward more rapid intensification with tropical cyclones, and so when we do get storms like tropical storms or hurricanes, we do see that the ability for them to rapidly intensify is increasing, and so that is certainly something that we’ll continue to see moving forward. People have to be prepared for these larger, more destructive hurricanes, unfortunately. Sam Delgado How are institutions in the area, such as local organizations and state agencies, preparing and helping communities that are in the path of Milton?  Emily Powell I think emergency responses and preparations are getting better and more efficient at warning people ahead of time, getting those evacuation orders well in advance to give people the time to actually heed the warning and evacuate. So for example, we saw roadways starting to pile up and with traffic yesterday, two days before landfall, which is really great that people can get out that soon and get to safety and not have to worry about leaving at the last minute, you know, when roadways are going to be gridlocked. We are really good about asking for help from neighboring communities to come in and be in place before a hurricane makes landfall, so that they can be there to respond immediately once the conditions are safe to do so. One thing that we’ve looked at, through a program I work on that’s focused more on climate and health, is special needs sheltering and how that works during evacuations. One of the things we found is not all the special needs registries are up to date, so not knowing who all needs special accommodations during evacuations and where they’re located. Local health departments can prepare more for understanding where their most vulnerable populations are, making sure their special needs registries are up to date, and getting those ready so that when storms like this do come, they know where those people are, and they can send help where they need to get people to evacuation shelters. So this is all stuff that has to happen before a hurricane is approaching land and making landfall. It’s a challenge and a need that’s been identified, and so we’re starting to address it. Sam Delgado There are communities in Florida who have been hit by extreme weather events multiple times in the course of a year. From your perspective, is there a breaking point for how many times a population can deal with these extreme weather disasters, and what might that breaking point look like? Emily Powell That’s a good question for each individual as well as each community to think about for themselves. At some point, you have to sort of weigh your own individual risk tolerance and understand what you’re willing to deal with and what you’re not. Some people are more risk averse than others. Some are more risk tolerant. So I think for us as communities, and for us individually, that’s just something we have to each ask ourselves and then take steps to increase our preparedness and just ensure that we’re as prepared as we can be for these types of storms. Sam Delgado Is there any advice or resources that you have for Florida residents to best protect themselves who are in the path of Hurricane Milton? Emily Powell The best, most credible resource is going to be the National Hurricane Center. Their website has the latest updates on the storm’s track, the storm’s intensity, the impacts, the hazards maps that they produce with the National Weather Service, your local National Weather Service office. Those are going to be the best sources of information on the storm itself. And then, of course, your local weather forecast office and your local Emergency Management Office for evacuation.

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An aerial view of people walking past destroyed and damaged buildings in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene flooding on October 8, 2024, in Bat Cave, North Carolina. Insured losses from natural disasters around the world in the first half of the year have already topped $60 billion, 54 percent higher than the 10-year average. Three-quarters of insured losses were due to severe thunderstorms, flooding, and forest fires. More recent calamities like Hurricane Helene will push the toll this year much higher. Damage estimates for Helene ranged as high as $47.5 billion as of October 4.   Home insurance premiums are rising across the country. Florida homeowners already pay the highest rates, on average more than $10,000 per year, well above the national average of around $2,400 per year. Last year, US home insurance rates jumped 11.3 percent on average, which has led some to drop their coverage altogether. Some Floridians have seen rate hikes as high as 400 percent over the past five years. That’s if they can find insurance at all. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have come home to a breakup letter from their private insurers, canceling their coverage. Others can’t find any company that will protect their home, leaving expensive, state-run insurers of last resort as their only option. Some private insurance companies have entirely pulled out of states like California, Florida, and Louisiana.  Meanwhile, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a federal program that provides flood coverage to 4.7 million policyholders, is more than $20 billion in debt to the US Treasury accruing $1.7 million in interest daily. In September, Congress reauthorized the program for a few months. The next funding deadline is December 20, 2024. If authorization lapses, the NFIP would stop selling and renewing flood insurance for millions of people.  Insurers like State Farm point to several factors behind these trends. Inflation has made rebuilding houses much more expensive and prices for reinsurance — insurance for insurance companies — have shot up. Insurers are also bearing more catastrophic risks as more people and property take root in high-risk areas like flood zones and neighborhoods that are more wildfire-prone, so that when a blaze ignites or a storm passes over, the losses are greater. And because of climate change, many types of natural disasters are packing more of a punch.  The turmoil in the insurance industry has major implications for the economy and for politics. Most banks will not offer a mortgage without homeowners insurance, and letting a policy lapse can lead to foreclosure. In the wake of a hurricane or wildfire, insurance payouts are critical for rebuilding lost homes or relocating to somewhere safer.  Insurance is also where the risks of tomorrow manifest today, and with rising average temperatures, many buildings will face bigger threats. That means homeowners will have to pay more for insurance, go without, or move to a place with lower rates. Right now, that leaves a trio of unpleasant options. Insurers can raise their rates in line with the risks they face, pricing more people out of coverage and leaving them to fend for themselves. Regulators can limit rate hikes and enforce coverage minimums, which can drive private insurers into bankruptcy or out of the market altogether. Or the government can subsidize or offer its own coverage, which would leave taxpayers holding the bag for mounting losses.  Despite all of this, insurers themselves are actually doing quite well. The US property and casualty insurers netted $823 billion in premiums last year, posting record profits in the hottest year on record with dozens of extreme weather disasters with tolls in the billions of dollars. Insurers have already posted even higher profits this year, and the sector is poised to do better in 2025.  So it’s a great time to be selling insurance, but not to buy it. Insurers have shown they can thrive even in a warmer world with more costly disasters; the challenge is getting their products to the people who need them. Doing so will require changes to how states regulate insurance, how companies model catastrophes, and new insurance products.  But insurance is ultimately about risk, and over the long term, there’s no substitute for reducing the overall risks stemming from climate change.  How insurance works, and how it stops working Like most businesses, a simple calculation lies at the core of the insurance sector: A company has to make more money in premiums than it pays out in damages, but figuring out where to set premiums and how much damage to expect gets extraordinarily complicated. The most common form of property insurance is indemnity, which grants a payout based on the amount of damage.  The formula for the losses that an insurer can expect has three key components. The first is the hazard, such as the probability of a severe storm occurring. The next is exposure, which is the value of the insured property in the path of danger. And the third is vulnerability, or how well a property can stand up to a given extreme weather scenario — whether it readily floods, burns, collapses, or survives the disaster intact.   Insurers then have to distribute these costs across their customers. Companies are competing with one another, so they can’t set their rates too high, and in many states, they face further limits on their pricing and minimum coverage requirements. There’s a whole subfield of mathematics dedicated to this practice.  Insurers themselves cover their risks with reinsurers. When a major earthquake, hurricane, or wildfire demands more payouts than a company can afford at once, insurers can file a claim with their reinsurer, which in turn is balancing disaster threats among insurance companies all over the world.  If you can balance these risks properly, insurance can be a lucrative line of business, as we’ve seen over the past year. But if they tip too far in any direction, it can lead to a financial collapse. After Hurricane Andrew rammed into the tip of Florida at Category 5 strength in 1992, causing $25 billion in insured losses (1992 dollars), at least 16 insurance companies became insolvent.  The storm was a major turning point for the insurance sector. It showed that the old formulas for calculating risk underestimated how much destruction could end up on an insurer’s books. After the waters receded, companies began to adopt catastrophe models, computer programs that use the physical traits of extreme weather events in a given area to estimate how much an insurer might have to pay out. This raised rates for many homeowners, but also led insurers to advocate for stronger building codes and defensive infrastructure like sea walls.  Now even catastrophe models are starting to show their weaknesses. These simulations are typically built on historical severe weather patterns, but because average temperatures are rising, the past is no longer prologue.  Integrating climate change into catastrophe models and then into insurance premiums is its own technical challenge. Scientists are still trying to suss out exactly how much warming is in store given that the biggest factor is how aggressively the world will act to limit greenhouse gas emissions.  But even within physical models of the Earth, there is still a wide range of uncertainty in how these gasses will alter weather. Insurers then have to gauge just how bad of a disaster they have to plan for, by what time frame, and then how to distribute those costs to policyholders in the present.  At the same time, the number of people is increasing in areas that are vulnerable to disasters worsened by climate change. Roughly 40 percent of the US lives in a coastal county, for example, and in states like Florida, the waterfront has experienced some of the highest levels of population growth. Just how many more people will build bungalows, condos, and office parks in places likely to burn or flood will shape payouts in the future — and thus premiums today.  Reinsurance companies have been bracing for climate change for decades Incorporating climate change into their business may be a more recent development for retail insurers, but reinsurance companies have long kept tabs on warming. While the fundamentals of risk management are similar, reinsurance companies and retail insurance firms operate under different constraints.  Frontline insurance companies tend to focus on specific regions and operate under local regulations, while the reinsurance business spans the globe in a freewheeling market. That gives reinsurers a more diverse risk portfolio and more flexibility in managing it, but they also must examine these risks on a global scale over decades.  Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, has studied climate change for 50 years, and their chief climate scientist, Ernst Rauch, has been working on this since for more than half of that time. While climate change is altering the risks on their balance sheets, Rauch said understanding the fundamental physics behind it has helped the company game out what to expect and adjust accordingly. With climate science, what was once a blank, uncertain view of the future is now coming into focus. “We feel very well prepared to cope with the challenges of climate change,” Rauch said. “And with this understanding we want to not only continue with this business, but depending on the terms and conditions, also grow our business model.” This knowledge also lays a course for reducing the financial and physical threats from warming, for companies and for policymakers. Looking at the three-pronged formula for insurance risk — hazard, exposure, and vulnerability — climate change mainly comes into play with the hazard component since rising average temperatures increase the chances of weather events causing more destruction. That provides the impetus for halting the rise in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.  Exposure is largely governed by inflation. For a house built decades ago, simply buying the lumber, shingles, and concrete for repairs after a storm is much more expensive now than it was when that house was built. Residential reconstruction costs have risen almost 5 percent in just the past year. Add to that the higher cost of labor and rising property values, which makes losses more expensive, and insurance costs go up independent of climate change.  Reducing vulnerability to disasters is one of the most immediate things people can do to keep threats in check. “This is where we as consumers, as policyholders, have the biggest influence on the risk,” Rauch said.  Tactics like preventing flooding by restoring natural watersheds and controlled burns to reduce the odds of a deadly wildfire can blunt the impact of a disaster. Adapting to climate perils like sea level rise with tactics like seawalls or using fire-resistant building materials in wildfire-prone forests can allow properties to endure a catastrophe. But to drive down insurance premiums with these measures, insurers have to first recognize and reward the homeowners and property managers that undertake them, and they don’t always do that.   “The computer models that insurers use to decide whether to renew or write insurance for homes and condominiums don’t always account for those investments in mitigation by homeowners,” said Dave Jones, who runs the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California Berkeley and served as California’s insurance commissioner from 2011 until 2018. Reinsurance companies also connect the impacts of disasters around the world. Their international portfolios allow them to withstand billions of dollars in insured losses. But that also means that a gargantuan disaster can create financial burdens even for people far removed from the destruction. If a massive typhoon hits Taiwan and causes extensive insured losses, reinsurers may have to raise their premiums for retail insurers, who would then raise their prices for policies in Florida.  Climate change isn’t the biggest factor behind the recent insurance premium spikes Many insurance companies say climate change is a key driver of long-term risk. Right now though, only 1 percent of the overall annual increase in insured losses seen so far is due to actual changes in the climate, according to Verisk, a risk analytics firm. The larger force to date is growing exposure due to inflation.  Verisk’s Rob Newbold, who studies extreme events, noted that many of the disasters that insurers are worried about do stem from the climate, but they’re already built into insurance rates (or they should be). And the specific role of rising average temperatures exacerbating these catastrophes so far hasn’t shown up in a big way in the data. The trend right now seems to be “ordinary” extreme weather falling on more expensive homes and businesses.  “I don’t want to try to suggest that climate change isn’t happening. The climate is changing. But climate itself has been a factor in insurance losses forever,” Newbold said. “We’re seeing this overall level of insured losses [rising], but from our perspective, the industry should not be surprised by this because the tools exist to quantify that risk.” In addition to inflation, there are other local factors that have driven up the costs of insurance in some states. Last year, major insurance firms like State Farm and Allstate announced they would not sign new property insurance policies in California because the losses they were facing from perils like wildfires were too much to bear at the rates they were allowed to charge (State Farm and Allstate did not respond to requests for comment). Other insurers dropped thousands of Californians from their existing policies. Similarly, Florida has also seen private insurers leave the state and drop customers in recent years.  Jerry Theodorou, who leads insurance research at the R Street Institute, a free market think tank, noted that insurers in California face regulations that limit their ability to increase rates and for a long time blocked them from using forward-looking catastrophe models to set their prices.  “California was a special case largely for regulatory reasons,” Theodorou said. “The main driver of the high premiums in Florida was plaintiff attorney firms run amok.” Florida is home to 6.5 percent of the US population but accounts for 79 percent of all homeowners insurance lawsuits. The state has also become a hot spot for roofing scams where roofing companies would seek out homes after a disaster to offer a cheap roof replacement and then turn around and bill insurance companies for much more expensive work. When insurance companies balk, the roofers sue.  So while climate change is increasing hazards over the long term, right now policy choices, economic trends, and market forces are driving most of the disruption in property insurance.  Is the future insurable? That depends on who you ask.  States have begun to take steps to lure insurance companies back. The Golden State is beginning to allow insurers to incorporate catastrophe models that anticipate the future while the Sunshine State just implemented a new law to limit insurance lawsuits. States are also updating building codes and offering insurance discounts for people who do things like upgrade their windows, use fire-resistant materials, and strengthen the frame of their homes.  “The tools are there,” Theodorou said. “They need to be deployed more.” He added that a government-run reinsurance company as some legislators have proposed would only entrench the current flaws of the insurance market.  And some insurers are responding. Earlier this year, Allstate said it would come back to California under one condition: It gets to raise home insurance rates by an average of 34 percent. In North Carolina, insurers are asking state regulators to raise rates by an average of 42 percent. Despite these challenges, the insurance industry is still profitable, investors continue to demonstrate an appetite for risk, and insurance requirements to get a home loan haven’t changed, so it’s not going to fade away anytime soon. At the right price, there is theoretically an insurance policy that can cover even the most precarious home. “Technically everything could be insurable for the right amount of protection and the right amount of mitigation,” Newbold said. “There’s no such property you can’t put coverage on.” But there’s no guarantee that anyone would be able to buy such a policy. Some insurers offer alternatives and complements to conventional indemnity insurance. Parametric insurance, which pays a fixed amount based on the strength of a disaster rather than the extent of the damage, is one approach.  Jones echoed that a government-run insurer wouldn’t solve the underlying disruption in the insurance sector and agreed that inflation and greater exposure are the major factors driving price hikes right now. “However, none of those two factors would matter near as much if there weren’t more severe and frequent weather events due to climate change,” Jones said.  He added that even though Florida fulfilled much of the insurance industry’s wishlist, such as protection from lawsuits and state-funded reinsurance, companies like Farmers Insurance are still exiting the state. “Florida may well be proof that we’re not going to rate our way out of this problem,” Jones said.  It’s also important to remember that insured losses are only the starting point for grappling with a disaster. According to Munich Re, more than half of natural disaster losses were not insured. Many of the people facing the greatest dangers from weather extremes are also the least equipped to deal with them and most likely to suffer in the aftermath. The dollar values don’t convey the entire social cost of a calamity. Without halting greenhouse gas emissions, these problems are only going to get harder. According to Jones, the rising risks from unchecked warming is going to make it practically impossible for insurers to stay in the game over the long term. “Insurers are not magicians; they can’t wave a wand and make the risk go away,” Jones said. “Ultimately, it all goes back to the climate crisis.”

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