Weekend Tornadoes, Storm Damage, and Insurance Coverage - Page 4 of 5 - Blue Skies Meteorological Services

All good things must come to an end. After almost four months of relatively quiescent weather, the 2014 tornado season kicked off quickly and tragically over the weekend.

Vilonia, AR tornado damage (Danny Johnston/AP photo)

On Friday evening, the year’s first intense tornado (defined as an EF3 or stronger) touched down in Chowan County North Carolina, killing an 11-month old child who was trapped beneath the debris of his home. That storm brought to an end two record-breaking streaks of benign weather, marking both the latest calendar date for a year’s first EF3 tornado as well as the latest calendar date for a year’s first tornado death.

Only two days later, on Sunday, April 27th, an outbreak of severe storms spawned multiple tornadoes that killed 16 people in Oklahoma and Arkansas. The most substantial damage occurred in central Arkansas, where an 80-mile-long path of destruction swept through northern Little Rock, leaving damage reportedly indicative of an EF3 or stronger tornado. The same slow-moving severe weather system hammered Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee on Monday and is expected to continue bringing dangerous weather, including the possibility of strong tornadoes, to the southeastern US through at least Wednesday.

Storm Prediction Center convective outlook for 29 April 2014

Although intense tornadoes are relatively rare, accounting for approximately 5% of all tornadoes nationally, they are responsible for a disproportionate 75% of all tornado fatalities (statistics for North Carolina). While each tornado fatality is tragic, tornado deaths have been generally declining in the US since the 1920’s, with an average of 80 people killed each year by tornado activity.

Tornado Fatalities 1875 – 2010 (credit NOAA)

Although the majority of tornado damage and fatalities are attributable to rare intense tornadoes, even much more common weak tornadoes and severe straight-line winds can cause substantial damage to property, felling trees, removing shingles and siding from homes, and flinging debris into structures and vehicles. Most homeowners insurance covers storm damage, including damage caused by wind, hail, lightning, debris, and falling trees. One notable coverage exception found in almost all insurance policies, however, is storm-induced flooding, including street flooding, storm surge, and areal flooding due to rising rivers, streams, and creeks. For such coverage, a separate flood insurance policy is required.

In some cases, though, street flooding is caused not by an exceptional storm (i.e. an “act of God”) but rather by an insufficient storm water drainage system. In such instances, liability for damages may rest with the planning or maintenance authority responsible for the storm water system, rather than with the homeowner.

Storm water sewer overflow (photo bwsc.org)

If a neighborhood or section of a neighborhood regularly floods, even during normal, everyday storms, the drainage system may be deficient. A forensic meteorological analysis (like this one from BSMS) of known storm events that led to street flooding, considered in the context of the local rainfall climatology, can reveal whether the drainage system was adequately designed and maintained to handle foreseeable events.

In addition to flood damage, homeowners insurance will not cover damage caused by a lack of proper maintenance. Occasionally, negligence may be suspected as a contributing factor to storm damage, leading to a denial of claim, even when it is not immediately clear whether damage would have still occurred with proper maintenance.

Storm damage

For instance, if a tree falls during a storm and is later found to be rotten, the insurer may deny the homeowner’s claim, insisting instead that negligence on the owner’s part (failing to remove a rotten tree) caused the tree to fall, rather than the storm. Such insurance disputes can lead to nasty legal battles. Investigation as to whether the homeowner knew or suspected that the tree was rotten (i.e. whether he or she was on notice), examination of other damage throughout the area (did healthy trees of a similar size fall nearby during the same storm?), as well as a forensic meteorological analysis (were wind speeds with the storm sufficient to fell a healthy tree of that size? did heavy rainfall and saturated soils reduce the root stability of the tree?) can greatly assist in determining the ultimate cause of the damage and thereby assist in settling such disputes.

So, the bottom line is this: storm season is here, and after a late start, it appears to be making up for lost time (at least at the moment). Extreme weather, which includes severe local storms as well as tropical cyclones, droughts, heat waves, areal flooding, wildfires, and winter storms, causes tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in damage annually in the US.

Severe local storms are, on average, responsible for more than 10% of all damages, with tropical cyclones and droughts/heat waves responsible for nearly 50% and 25%, respectively. While severe local storms are not responsible for the largest percentage of damage costs, they do represent the most common/frequent type of extreme weather experienced in the United States, and almost everyone, at some point, will experience storm damage. Make sure you understand your property insurance policy, including any exceptions, and take care of any nagging maintenance issues (like rotten trees or loose roof shingles) that could jeopardize a storm-related insurance claim.

In the event that you do find yourself in a weather-related insurance or legal dispute, whether as the insured or the insurer, the plaintiff or the defendant, do not hesitate to contact Blue Skies Meteorological Services. We will gladly provide a complimentary consultation to discuss how a forensic meteorological analysis could determine the role that the weather played in your case and how such an analysis could facilitate an advantageous resolution of the dispute.

Next time: Weather-impacted automobile accidents

On February 16th of this year, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in Jakarta, Indonesia, and issued a dire warning about the security risks posed by anthropogenic climate change (aka “global warming”). In his remarks, Sec. Kerry referred to climate change as a threat to national and international security on par with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. For those remarks, he received swift and abundant political criticism.

Six weeks later, the IPCC released its updated report, “Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,” which states, in no uncertain terms, that climate change is already occurring and that the world is not prepared to effectively deal with the impacts .

Despite the scientific consensus on the causes and the physical, economic, and societal consequences of climate change — further reinforced by the latest IPCC report — climate change remains a strongly politicized issue in the US, with large portions of the American public and their elected officials flat out denying that human activity is causing the Earth’s climate to shift in dangerous ways. The political response was not surprising.

What might be surprising to many people, however, is where the criticism over Mr. Kerry’s remarks and the latest IPCC report did not come from. It did not come from the US military – an organization intimately familiar with the sort of national and international security issues to which Sec. Kerry compared the threat from anthropogenic climate change (ACC). The reason for this lack of criticism is simple: John Kerry and the latest IPCC report did not say anything that the US military didn’t already know. For almost as long as politicians have been debating the reality of climate change, military leaders have been studying and preparing to deal with its consequences. The same is true for a growing but still grossly inadequate number of national and international business and industry leaders.

That is perhaps a bit surprising. The leaders in climate change adaptation and response are not the elected officials shouting so loudly in Washington DC, but rather the US military and a number of businesses that have been quietly but steadily making preparations for years. The fact that both of these communities – military and business – are traditionally considered quite conservative points to the fact that climate change is not fundamentally a political issue – it is not an argument about opinion, because decades of climate science have firmly established the basic facts. It is instead a practical issue, one that places in sharp relief the realization that, despite our tremendous technology, we human beings are still critically dependent on the weather and climate in which we live.

As far back as 2003 (and likely even earlier), the Department of Defense was considering the security implications of and adaptation strategies for anthropogenic climate change, including both abrupt and gradual change scenarios. The adaptation and mitigation strategies being considered and implemented include not only plans and contingencies for dealing with the political upheaval, famine, water shortages, mass refugee movements, and natural disasters that are expected to be induced by climate change but also plans for reducing the military’s non-renewable resource usage and greenhouse gas emissions.

While some uncertainty remains in the details of climate change impacts, the basic impacts like increases in extreme temperature and precipitation events, ecosystem shifts, disruptions to food production and water supply, and rising sea levels are well understood and known with high confidence. The uncertainty in the details can pose substantial challenges for effective adaptation planning, though. When you don’t know exactly how much, exactly when, and exactly where the impacts will be felt, estimation and bet-hedging are inevitable and necessary. Planning for the absolute worst is expensive and may not be necessary in the end, but simply hoping for the best could lead to a disaster of under-preparedness.

Of course, if we wait until all of the details become crystal clear and well constrained, it will be too late and far too expensive to effectively adapt. So smart players hedge their bets. They study their exposure and vulnerability to known and likely climate change impacts. They assess their risk. And they take action.

Some local and regional businesses may be understandably wary of spending money to prepare for something that “isn’t absolutely certain,” but keep in mind that we prepare for things that aren’t absolutely certain all the time.

Along the coast, we buy and keep plywood in our garages and stocks of canned food in our pantries for hurricane season, even though most of us won’t see more than a bit of tropical rain in any given season (and will end up eating lots of canned food to clear shelf space come October and November). In the Midwest, we build basements and safe-rooms to shelter us from tornadoes, even though most of us will never be hit by a twister. We buy insurance, and commodities futures, and keep money in the bank “just in case”.

We do this not because we’re certain that we’ll win the bet, but because it would be so much worse to lose the bet without hedging, without preparing. We seek security and resilience by acknowledging and adapting to risk.

So when the Department of Defense, Coca Cola, Levi Straus, Swiss Re, and other major players start creating and enacting climate change adaptation and mitigation plans, it’s time for the rest of us to take notice.

Climate change is real, it’s already happening, and it’s almost certainly going to get worse. How much worse is the trillion-dollar question and is largely within our control, should we choose to exercise it. We (as a species, as a collection of nations and communities) can choose how we adapt to the warming that’s already built into our climate system due to the past 150 years of industrial emissions, and we can choose how and by how much we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate future climatic changes.

Despite the political overtones that stubbornly persist in the US, climate change is not a fundamentally political issue, and we treat it as such only at our peril. It is a practical, economic, and human issue for which pro-active planning, adaptation, and mitigation are the only reasonable responses. Ignoring climate change or denying it only amplifies the challenges that we face.

The first step toward building climate change resiliency is understanding the risks. Blue Skies Meteorological Services can help businesses identify their exposure and vulnerability to climate change impacts so that risks can be effectively targeted and reduced while resiliency is simultaneously built into operations.

As March transitions to April, meteorologists throughout the country begin to turn their attention from winter weather to severe weather. Although severe weather can strike at any time (tornadoes have occurred throughout every month of the year), the peak of severe weather risk in the United States occurs during spring and summer.

Warm air, humidity, and strong frontal systems are the fuel for severe storms, and all three of these ingredients begin to meet during spring – that most welcome transition from winter’s bitter cold to summer’s sweltering heat.

As southerly spring breezes push warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico northward and deeper into the heart of the North American continent, it inevitably clashes with cold, dry air pushed southward by powerful low pressure systems that swing across the country, refusing to give up winter’s ghost. Where the warm, humid air meets the cold, dry air, explosively powerful thunderstorms often form.

Although we should ideally be prepared for severe weather at any time of the year, the onset of “storm season” offers an annual opportunity to refresh our emergency plans, supplies, and knowledge about severe weather.

When severe weather threatens, the National Weather Service alerts the public by issuing a severe weather watch or a severe weather warning. Severe thunderstorm, tornado, and flash flood watches and warnings are common during the spring and summer months.

Watches are generally issued first, cover a large area, and indicate that conditions are ripe for the development of a particular type of severe weather. A watch does not indicate that severe weather is immanent at your location, just that such weather is likely to occur somewhere within the region for which the watch has been issued (the “watch box”). When a severe weather watch is issued for your location, be alert for rapidly changing weather conditions and prepare for the possibility of severe weather.

If a severe weather warning is issued for your location, start carrying out your emergency plan. A warning means that severe weather is bearing down. Tune in to your NOAA weather radio and local meteorologist to monitor the progress of the storm or weather event. Seek appropriate shelter and follow the recommendations issued with the severe weather warning.

Although emergency plans and supplies depend largely on the specific type of weather that you’re preparing for, there are a few essentials necessary for all types of severe weather. These include:

• Flashlights in good working condition (check the bulbs if you haven’t used the flashlight in a while)
• A battery-powered or hand-crank radio that receives the NOAA weather bands (like these)
• Spare batteries to fit your flashlights, radio, and/or cell phone charger
• A supply of safe drinking water
• A supply of food that requires little or no preparation
• A battery-powered or hand-crank charger with appropriate connector for your cell phone
• A complete first aid kit, including medications
• Plastic sheeting, tarps, duct tape, and nylon rope for initial damage response

Additional information about compiling a complete disaster supply kit can be found at FEMA’s Ready.gov .

When severe weather strikes, you should be prepared for several hours to possibly days without electricity as well as possible disruptions in the supply of drinking water. During that time, you’ll want to be able to receive weather and news updates as well as see where you’re going (hence the radio and flashlights). Preparing for hurricanes is even more involved, and we’ll cover that in a later post.

Some basic information about preparing for and responding to severe weather is provided below. For comprehensive information about preparing for severe weather, please visit FEMA’s severe weather readiness website.

Basic Preparations and Plans for Different Types of Severe Weather:

• Severe thunderstorm and/or tornado – prepare a safe, sturdy place to shelter through the storm (small interior room on the lowest floor, basement, safe-room, etc); stock your shelter with your emergency supply kit; monitor NOAA weather bands and local news for storm updates.
• Flood and Flash flood – remain cognizant of rapidly changing conditions; never cross a flooded roadway; seek higher ground if you are in the path of rising water
• Lightning – seek shelter inside a building or vehicle (although avoid vehicles if there is a risk of tornadoes with a particular storm)
• Hurricanes – know your home’s vulnerability to wind, flooding, and storm surge; monitor the hurricane forecast closely; have a specific emergency plan in place; have a well-stocked disaster kit in place; prepare for both the possibility of sheltering in place as well as the possibility of needing to evacuate; if you are going to evacuate, begin making those arrangements at least 24 hrs before expected landfall.

Note: Blue Skies Meteorological Services presents on the topics of severe weather preparedness and the meteorology of severe local storms. We are also available to assist in the development of emergency plans tailored to the specific needs of your business as well as the weather and climatology of your region.

Well, El Niño is looking more and more likely during summer and fall of 2014!

As we mentioned back in February, both traditional El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indicators as well as a new statistical forecasting technique that utilizes Pacific air temperatures are suggesting possible El Niño conditions by later this year.

During the first week of March, the Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Watch, suggesting a moderate (50%) likelihood that warmer than average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) will develop in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean by the summer or fall of this year. ENSO is arguably the most important driver of interannual climate variability across the globe, strongly affecting both temperature and precipitation patterns. Here in the US, El Niño is most strongly felt during winter, when it typically brings mild weather to the northern states, wetter weather to the southeastern states, and drier weather to the upper Midwest. For a more in-depth discussion of the causes and impacts of El Niño, please check out NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and the Climate Prediction Center.

Because of its large impact on weather, El Niño also has a large impact on national and global economies. From agriculture to fishing, from energy production and demand to home construction, from natural disaster costs to tourism — ENSO directly affects up to 10% of the US economy. Intense El Niño events cost the US economy tens of billions of dollars. Some of that cost is unavoidable, but much of it is not. For that reason, early and accurate forecasts of ENSO conditions are critical.

And there is good news on the forecast front! We mentioned in February that, due to budget cuts, NOAA’s network of buoys dedicated to monitoring equatorial ocean temperatures (and therefore detecting the early signs of El Niño or its opposite condition, La Niña) had degraded to operating at a mere 40% effectiveness.

The Tropical Atmospheric Ocean Array (TAO) is about to get some much-needed TLC, according to Bloomberg News and the National Weather Service (NWS). Thanks to some budget relief in 2014, NWS is set to start repairing 70 TAO buoys, bringing the operational capacity of the TAO array up to 80%. This doubling of the current capacity will provide significantly more detail about ocean conditions, which in turn can increase lead-time for El Niño forecasts by several months, thereby allowing weather-sensitive industry to prepare early and thoroughly.

After several relatively quiet years in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, El Niño may be on its way back.

A new research study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, February 2014) utilized a novel, long-range statistical approach to El Niño forecasting and found a 75% likelihood that El Niño conditions will begin to present by the end of 2014.

El Niño is the warm phase of a larger ocean-atmosphere cycle called the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). During an El Niño event, the waters of the eastern equatorial Pacific off the coast of Central and South America become anomalously warm. During the opposite phase of the cycle, La Niña, those same waters become anomalously cold (see figure at right, credit: NASA).

This fluctuation in water temperature may seem like a relatively localized phenomenon, but because the ocean and atmosphere are coupled (interconnected) and circulate the entire globe, an increase in water temperatures off the coast of Peru is not only devastating to the local fishing industry, but is also the most important driver of natural interannual climate variability across the entire planet.

Globally, El Niño conditions result in a major shift in atmospheric circulations and, consequently, weather patterns (see figure below right, credit: NOAA), as well as an increase in globally averaged temperatures.

In the northern hemisphere, El Niño conditions typically result in

• Stronger, more frequent storms affecting the southern US, especially during winter, due to a more vigorous and more southerly subtropical jet stream
• Warmer than normal temperatures throughout the northern US, southern and western Canada, and Alaska
• Drier upper Midwest in the US

Conventional El Niño forecasting techniques rely on dynamical and statistical climate models that analyze observations of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and wind patterns. Although this forecast method can be quite accurate when making predictions a few months out, its skill is rather limited at longer-range forecasting. Accurate long-range forecasting is critical, however, to preparing for and mitigating the economic effects of El Niño events. For example, in the agricultural sector, farmers need to be able to plan which crops to plant based on expected weather conditions (e.g. hotter than normal, wetter than normal, drier than normal, etc) to reduce the likelihood of crop failure.

The study published by Ludescher, et al. this month claims to have developed a forecasting technique that can accurately predict ENSO fluctuations up to a year in advance by relying solely on statistical correlations between air temperatures across the Pacific region and upcoming changes to equatorial Pacific SSTs (i.e. upcoming El Niño or La Niña events). Although the study’s authors tout its long-range predictive ability, it cannot currently predict the magnitude (severity) of those upcoming events.

The study’s authors say that their technique accurately predicted the absence of El Niño during 2012 and 2013, but because the forecasting methodology is so new, it has yet to be tested in a prediction of non-neutral ENSO conditions. Many atmospheric scientists not involved with the study remain skeptical of the skill of the new technique for that reason as well as for the fact that the study does not propose an explanation as to why the statistical correlation should work. In other words, the study does not advance scientists’ understanding of the physical mechanisms that drive the ENSO cycle.

If the new statistical forecasting technique proves successful, though, it may alleviate a problem that has been plaguing conventional ENSO forecasters for the last couple of years and that may now be negatively affecting the skill of seasonal climate (e.g. ENSO) forecasts.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains a network of moored buoys in the tropical Pacific Ocean to monitor real-time ocean temperatures for input into the climate models used to forecast El Niño and La Niña. Since budget cuts in 2012 forced NOAA to reduce its maintenance schedule of the buoys, however, over half of them have failed. With less detail about ocean temperatures in this critical location being provided by the thinning buoy network, forecast models may suffer a loss of accuracy.

Only time will tell. The dynamical and statistical climate models used to provide conventional ENSO forecasts are also beginning to predict an increased likelihood of El Niño conditions beginning in late 2014. It’s still too early for significant confidence, but those readers who are involved in weather-sensitive industries should monitor the situation closely and consider planning early for possible El Niño conditions beginning in late fall 2014.