Your CASTLE

 Insurance Can Be Interesting
   This illustration attracted my attention even though it is alarming and would be even more so if I could have also grabbed Wisconsin, which appears below Washington above. The main point from this major article is that it is now not uncommon for insurers to refuse to insure your home or drop you after they read the latest weather forecast. If you do not have a home, you now have a good excuse in that you cannot buy one if you can't insure it. Such dire news coming from me is likely not to be believed, so here is the source: "As Insurers Around the U. S.Bleed Cash From Climate Shocks, Homeowners Lose," Christopher Flavelle, et al., New York Times. Some of the points made:

   The insurance turmoil caused by climate change — which had been concentrated in Florida, California and Louisiana — is fast becoming a contagion, spreading to states like Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio, Utah and Washington. Even in the Northeast, where homeowners insurance was still generally profitable last year, the trends are worsening....
  In 2023, insurers lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states, more than a third of the country, according to a New York Times analysis of newly available financial data. That’s up from 12 states five years ago, and eight states in 2013. The result is that insurance companies are raising premiums by as much as 50 percent or more, cutting back on coverage or leaving entire states altogether. Nationally, over the last decade, insurers paid out more in claims than they received in premiums, according to the ratings firm Moody’s, and those losses are increasing.    
   The growing tumult is affecting people whose homes have never been damaged and who have dutifully paid their premiums, year after year. Cancellation notices have left them scrambling to find coverage to protect what is often their single biggest investment. As a last resort, many are ending up in high-risk insurance pools created by states that are backed by the public and offer less coverage than standard policies. By and large, state regulators lack strategies to restore stability to the market....
 Even the insurance companies are having trouble getting coverage. Reinsurance companies, global giants like Swiss Re, insure the insurers, sharing some of the risk of the policies they write. As disasters worsen, reinsurers have become more reluctant to underwrite insurance in parts of the United States. That’s made insurance companies even more conservative about where to do business....
 “I believe we’re marching toward an uninsurable future” in many places, said Dave Jones, the former insurance commissioner of California and now director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California Berkeley law school.

  The author did not have second thoughts since he published the next day, this article: "4 Takeaways From Our Homeowners Insurance Investigation: Across the Country, More Intense Heat, Storms and Fires Are Causing the Home Insurance Market to Start to Buckle," Christopher Flavelle, NYT, May 14, 2024. In condensed form, here they are:
1. Climate change is upending the insurance market.

2. Insurers are pulling back coverage in surprising places.

3. The consequences of that pullback could affect the broader economy.

4. States are intervening in different ways.

   If H5N1 hits, life insurance could be next. 

CANCON - I will just say, "Coming Soon to an Area Near You." 
The Bonus: This news has not reached Florida as you can see from these new headlines: "Ron DeSantis Signs Bill Scrubbing 'Climate Change' From Florida State Laws," and "DeSantis Signs Law Deleting Climate Change From Florida Policy."

Hail Storms

 Something Else to Worry About

   Today, rather than offer more contrarian opinions of which you may not have been aware, I will focus on a meteorological event which you may have missed.  It was not missed in Texas, where very, very big hail stones fell, perhaps deservedly so, on Texans who appreciate having very big things, and likely on many who think that the notion of climate change is a very big conspiracy. I insert that editorial comment because I recall reading recently that there is some concern that climate change may lead to an increase in the number of hail storms and in the production of hail much, much larger, and perhaps even more painful than kidney stones. 

    The heavy hail fell around the first of May and this headline provides all the size data you need: " 'Gargantuan' Hailstone That Fell Wednesday May Claim a New Texas Record: Some Estimates Put the Stone at More Than a Half-Foot Wide." I should add that the headline was not produced by a boasting Texas journalist, but is found in the Washington Post on May 1, 2021. While that my convince you that some very large hail stones were found, Texas readers will know that the Washington Post pushes many conspiracies.

    Although I recall reading that the coming changes in the climate may cause horrible hail storms, I couldn't remember where. After some digging, it was likely from some news stories reporting on this recent study, which says this:
Hailstorms are dangerous and costly phenomena that are expected to change in response to a warming climate. In this Review, we summarize current knowledge of climate change effects on hailstorms. As a result of anthropogenic warming, it is generally anticipated that low-level moisture and convective instability will increase, raising hailstorm likelihood and enabling the formation of larger hailstones; the melting height will rise, enhancing hail melt and increasing the average size of surviving hailstones…..

The authors indicate that such predictions are hard to make and that the composition of hail storms will vary globally. ("The Effects of Climate Change on Hailstorms," Timothy H. Raupach, et al, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 2, pages 213–226(2021).

   We don't generally think much about hail storms and when we have one we usually like running to the window to see the little, short-lived, silver popcorn-like crystals bouncing in the grass. We don't often see them in the increasingly sensational weather news reports because they have melted by the time the TV crew arrives. Floods and tornadoes are much better. 

   But, hail storms have done a lot of damage and they will surely do much more if heavy grapefruit-sized stones start coming through windshields and even roofs. By the way, the record  for the largest hail stone is eight-inches and it melted shortly after falling on Vivian, South Dakota on July 23, 2010. 

Sources: 

The place to begin is with the NOAA, which luckily, mostly outlasted former President Trump.  The U.S. has sustained 291 weather and climate disasters since 1980 in which overall damages/costs exceeded $1 Billion: "U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters."  Hail is not found in a separate category, but is included under "Severe Storms." For example:

South Texas Hail Storms - May 2020: South Texas hail storms cause widespread impact to several cities with golf-ball sized hail damaging many homes, vehicles and businesses. The highest concentration of hail damage occurred across the northern portion of the San Antonio metroplex. There was also significant damage east of San Marcos, southeast of Waco and to the west and south of Bryan and College Station. Total Estimated Costs:

$1.4 Billion; 0 Deaths

Colorado Hail Storms - July 2019: Colorado hail storms across the Denver and Fort Collins that damaged many homes and vehicles. Total

Estimated Costs: $1.0 Billion; 0 Deaths

Texas Hail Storm - June 2018: Large-hail impacts highly-populated area of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex. Golfball to baseball-sized hail damages

many homes, vehicles and businesses. Total Estimated Costs: $1.3 ($1.4) Billion; 0 Deaths

For a good summary of the recent bad news about the weather see: "US Hit With Record Number of Billion-dollar Extreme Weather Disasters in 2020, Esther Whieldon, Platts Energy Trader, Jan. 11, 2021.

The U.S. in 2020 experienced a record-smashing year in billion-dollar-scale extreme weather and climate change-linked disasters such as wildfires, tropical cyclones, tornados and hail storms, according to figures the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released Jan. 8.

In 2020, the U.S. experienced 22 extreme weather and climate-exacerbated disasters that each had losses in excess of $1 billion. Those events collectively caused at least $95 billion in damages, killed at least 262 people and injured scores more, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

The largest number of annual major disasters previously was 16, which occurred in 2011 and 2017. The figures for 2020 were also significantly higher than in 2019 when the U.S. experienced 14 major disasters that caused $45 billion in losses.

Scientists have projected that as average global temperatures continue to rise due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions the number and intensity of extreme weather events would rapidly increase.

See also: Hail Research (which is where the baseball picture above was found.)

Severe Weather - 101 - Hail.  

See also the National Center for Environmental Information (formerly the National Climatic Data Center.)

Some Canadian Sources:

The folks in the insurance business are paying attention. Here is a sample from a recent report from the Insurance Bureau of Canada:

Hailstorms Are Becoming More Severe and Frequent – Are You Prepared?

The frequency, severity and cost of severe weather events are rising across the country. From June until September, it’s hail season in Alberta and the Prairies. Properties in these regions are at risk of damage due to hail, heavy rainfall and strong winds.

The Calgary hailstorm on June 13, 2020 resulted in approximately 70,000 claims and over $1.3 billion in insured damages. The majority of the insured damages was to personal property and vehicles, with a smaller percentage to commercial property. It was the costliest hailstorm in Canadian history and the fourth costliest natural disaster of all time.

For a more detailed report see this one from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction: "Hail Climatology for Canada: An Update," David Etkin, York University, Feb. 2018 (47pp. pdf.) The source for this table:

Hail Storms in the Past:

Here are a few samples:

"Worst Hail Storm in Canadian History,: Elizabeth Church, The Globe and Mail, Sept. 7, 2015.

From 100 Years Ago: "Big Hail Storm at Neville Sask. Much Property Damaged in Area 30 by 100 Miles," The Globe, June 15, 1921.

"Hail Stone Stories: Remarkable Rain and Hail Storms in the Southwest," The Atlanta Constitution, April 12, 1887.

Insect Apocalypse

My only purpose here is to call your attention to an article that you should read even though it will spoil your day. It is a long article and I will not attempt to summarize it since I already wrote an elegy to insects over a year ago. It is not that I was particularly prescient, I was just paying attention. If you read this essay and my elegy your work will be done.

  The essay is a very good one; do read the whole thing: “The Insect Apocalypse is Here: What Does it Mean For the Rest of Life on Earth?”, Brooke Jarvis, Nov. 27, 2018, The New York Times Magazine.  Here is a sample paragraph:

"Entomologists also knew that climate change and the overall degradation of global habitat are bad news for biodiversity in general, and that insects are dealing with the particular challenges posed by herbicides and pesticides, along with the effects of losing meadows, forests and even weedy patches to the relentless expansion of human spaces. There were studies of other, better-understood species that suggested that the insects associated with them might be declining, too. People who studied fish found that the fish had fewer mayflies to eat. Ornithologists kept finding that birds that rely on insects for food were in trouble: eight in 10 partridges gone from French farmlands; 50 and 80 percent drops, respectively, for nightingales and turtledoves. Half of all farmland birds in Europe disappeared in just three decades. At first, many scientists assumed the familiar culprit of habitat destruction was at work, but then they began to wonder if the birds might simply be starving. In Denmark, an ornithologist named Anders Tottrup was the one who came up with the idea of turning cars into insect trackers for the windshield-effect study after he noticed that rollers, little owls, Eurasian hobbies and bee-eaters — all birds that subsist on large insects such as beetles and dragonflies — had abruptly disappeared from the landscape."

 

Post Script
     Also discussed in the essay is the "shifting baseline syndrome" which basically indicates that what is "normal" changes over time. If you are a child that has rarely seen a bug or a blue sky you won't miss them (and you will be diagnosed with "nature deficit disorder".) That reminded me of the recent furor over the decision to remove some words from the new Oxford Junior English Dictionary since children wouldn't be familiar with them - words like "heron", "nectar",  "acorn" and "buttercup". If you are interested see:"How the Loss of Vivid, Exacting Language Diminishes Our World," Meara Sharma, The Washington Post, Dec. 8, 2017 and "What's a Dictionary's Job? To Tell Us How to Use Words or To Show Us How We're Using Them," Scott Huler, The Washington Post, Jan. 25, 2018. And if you are really serious: "Badger or Bulbasaur - Have Children Lost Touch With Nature?', The Guardian, Sept. 30, 2017.
     Among the new words we adults will need: "Anthropocene" and "Eremocine" which means the "age of loneliness."