| | Lavanya Ramanathan is a senior editor at Vox and editor of the Today, Explained newsletter. |
Umair Irfan is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, Covid-19, and energy policy. |
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Lavanya Ramanathan is a senior editor at Vox and editor of the Today, Explained newsletter. Umair Irfan is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, Covid-19, and energy policy. |
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Hurricanes are changing. We're not ready. |
Good morning! I'm Lavanya Ramanathan, the editor of Today, Explained. I hope you're enjoying the newsletter each morning. Have feedback? I'm here for it. Drop me a line by just replying to this email and let me know what you want to see here, and even what you don't.
Today, we're looking at Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida last night as a ferocious Category 4 storm after gaining strength as it barreled across the Gulf of Mexico. According to Vox's Benji Jones, the storm and its expected surge have the potential to wreak havoc across the Southeast, but also dump heavy rains onto Appalachia and beyond. Before summer had even begun, experts were predicting that this year's hurricane season would be an unusually active one, with as many as 25 named storms churning across the Atlantic Ocean. The ingredients were all there: the uniquely warm ocean temperatures, lessened Atlantic trade winds and wind shear, and the La Niña conditions cooling the waters of the Pacific. But it's impossible to look at hurricanes in 2024 without also considering the context of climate change, which has made everything from rains to drought to wildfires more extreme globally, and put more ecosystems and humans in danger in the process. The record-hot waters in the Gulf this summer, for example, have intensified storms like Helene and Beryl, a supercharged hurricane that broke the record for the earliest Category 5 in a season, making them that much more fearsome. I recently spoke with Umair Irfan, a correspondent at Vox who's been covering climate, the environment, and environmental policy for a decade, about this hurricane season, what has changed about these massive storms in recent years amid climate change — and what role humans are playing in compounding their impact. Our conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. |
Lavanya Ramanathan: Tell us how we used to think about hurricanes, in terms of categories and in terms of strength. What's complicating that thinking now?
Umair Irfan: The main way we categorize hurricanes is by wind speed. Category 1, 2, 3 — those are thresholds defined by how fast the winds from the hurricane are moving. But what we've found in recent decades, and with lots of recent experience, is that wind is not the most destructive element of the hurricane. It's the water.
It's the rainfall, it's flooding, it's storm surge. The water is what causes the most property damage, and what also causes the most casualties and the most extensive tolls on human life. Water makes it difficult to get repair crews in and to get ambulances in and to get people out. Flooding is what blocks the roads.
It's a challenge conveying to the public that when you think about water as the big threat rather than wind, you can take different precautions: storm-proofing your house, flood prevention and mitigation, but also taking evacuation orders more seriously.
What should we know about this hurricane season? You've written that it's expected to be an unusually active season.
To form a hurricane, you need a few things to fall into place. You need warm water at the surface of the ocean, at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter, you need limited wind shear in the air above it, and then you need another thing called atmospheric instability, where the layers of the atmosphere start to blend and merge with one another. What that does is it creates an environment where you can have a lot of evaporation, where water can move upward to a very high altitude. That's the main engine of a hurricane.
Hurricanes are a relatively rare phenomenon. It doesn't happen very often that all these ingredients align in just the right way.
But last year was the hottest year on record, and we had a major El Niño, which is a major pattern in the Pacific Ocean that tends to drive up global average temperatures. So air temperatures were very high, causing the oceans to heat up. The major ingredients were there. I was in Houston after one of the big storms of this season, Hurricane Beryl, which struck in July. I saw the effects of the storm really taking their toll on the city for days afterward, in ways you wouldn't necessarily expect. How is our understanding of the impact of hurricanes changing?
Houston and Hurricane Beryl are good examples of how the ways we describe hurricanes don't tend to reflect the risk that they can pose. It's not simply the wind speed, or the strength, but how vulnerable the area is. Houston was hit by Hurricane Harvey years ago, which caused immense amounts of record flooding because the storm parked over the city and dropped a lot of rain. But Houston also has very little in the way of zoning. It's also very flat, and it's right next to the Gulf Coast, so there was not a lot of infrastructure there to cope with an immense amount of water. The main natural features that would absorb water have been paved over to support development. And so there are human-level decisions that ended up worsening the impact. With Beryl, it was also a fast-moving storm, and the wind caused a lot of damage to power lines. One of the utility companies there, Centerpoint, has a backlog of maintenance and there were well-known vulnerabilities. So when you had a major storm, it knocked out a lot of power, but also took a long time to get it back. Meanwhile, Houston had a heat wave, so there was an intense energy demand. The high heat, the not having power, all converged to compound the effects of this disaster.
If you look at Beryl as just a Category 1 storm, you might brush it off. But when you look at all these other things going on, you realize this is a much more severe disaster than the category would suggest. |
Houston Chronicle via Getty Images |
And the impact was far broader, right?
Right. The remnants of Tropical Storm Debby and Beryl both hit Vermont, and caused a lot of flooding and damage, and actually killed people. There was no place for that water to run off to, the people there are not necessarily well-versed in how to evacuate ahead of a storm, and the waterways, roads, and bridges are not designed to withstand sub-tropical storms.
Is this something that we're seeing more of, or are going to see more of? We see that in general with extreme weather. We had a major heat wave in the Pacific Northwest a few years ago; that was devastating because that's the area with the least amount of air conditioning in the US. It was harmful for the people there because they're not acclimated to the heat, and they don't have the infrastructure to deal with it.
We see the same thing with storms. A weaker storm can still be devastating in an area that does not have infrastructure that can withstand rains, or porous areas that can absorb the water. And when an event does occur, there's more severe rainfall, because as air temperatures warm, the air can hold onto more moisture. So, while we're focusing on the extremes, we should look at what's typical as well, and what's typical is also changing. Is there something people can do to protect themselves on an individual level? First, you have to start to rethink your mentality. There's a pervasive thinking that bad things won't happen to you.
But one of the concerns with climate change is that it's bringing extremes into areas where they haven't experienced them before. So this is a new process for some. The first step is recognizing and appreciating that you are vulnerable, that bad things can happen but you can in fact prepare for them.
The big thing is you want to also get your policymakers thinking about things that can mitigate disasters over time — things like building sea walls in coastal areas, but also thinking about big changes like rethinking where we are allowed to build at all. Are we going to retreat from certain areas? Are we just going to have to give up on oceanfront areas because the risk is too high? These are much more difficult policy questions, but we're going to have to start grappling with them because now is the best opportunity — not after a disaster. |
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| Leaving America for work-life balance |
Today, Explained flies to Portugal to find out how the dust has settled on the pandemic-era quest for better living and working conditions. |
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Courtesy of the office of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz |
Where do you stand on animal rights, though? Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has made a habit of posting photos with cute baby animals. As the governor of Minnesota, he's working to garner support in farm country, and as such has supported Big Agriculture by providing free advertising and public funding to the meat and dairy sectors. Yet, these industries cause pollution, hurt animals, and endanger public health and workers. The Eric Adams scandal finally broke: Mayor Eric Adams of New York City is facing federal criminal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. The indictment comes after authorities seized the phones of many of his staffers as part of an ongoing investigation into possible corruption that had been swirling for weeks. We explain what you need to know. Do celebrity political endorsements even matter? Pop star Chappell Roan is stirring up controversy after stating in a viral TikTok that she will not endorse Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, although she will vote for her. Her pushback against endorsing comes after public speculation this year about stars like Megan Thee Stallion, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift using their platforms to speak up before the election. And speaking of celebrities: Comedian Ellen DeGeneres isn't too pleased at her public "cancellation" over rumors around about the toxic work environment at The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Her new Netflix special is an attempt to clean up her image and garner sympathy — and it falls flat. A Cybertruck driver and Ron Swanson walk into a bar: And they'd have a lot to talk about. Meet the anti-woke tech bro, a burgeoning type of libertarian supercharged by the manosphere. With a mutual interest in figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Joe Rogan, many people with this shared worldview are also looking for community within the American loneliness epidemic. Here's what we know about the rise of the techno-libertarian. |
No more password sharing on Disney+: The streamer is adding a "paid sharing" feature in which anyone outside of an account's household will have to sign up as an "Extra Member" and pay an additional monthly fee. [Variety] Harris visits the US-Mexico border: Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is set to campaign in Arizona at the US-Mexico border to speak about border security and immigration. The move comes as Harris tries to mitigate former President Donald Trump and Republicans' false claims of her being a "border czar" who allowed people to cross into the United States illegally. [AP] |
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A solutions-oriented social prescription |
As someone who often reports on the loneliness epidemic, I'm constantly pondering potential remedies. It's not quite as simple as telling people to make more friends or to just get out there and gab with strangers. There are plenty of obstacles holding people back, from physical and mental illnesses to access to supportive social environments. When I saw Julia Hotz's recently published book on the concept of social prescribing as a way to address loneliness worldwide, I was intrigued. The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging explains the concept of social prescriptions: A medical professional-mandated dose of nature immersion, art participation, or volunteer work meant to improve mental and physical health as well as foster social connection. Hotz offers case studies on how a social prescription to engage in cold open-water swimming helped a woman cope with depression or how volunteering eased another's chronic pain. Central to these stories is the power of connection: how each character found camaraderie and purpose in the people they met at each of their groups.
The Connection Cure is as solutions-oriented as they come, and may even inspire you. No prescription necessary.
—Allie Volpe, senior reporter |
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Today's edition was produced and edited by senior editor Lavanya Ramanathan, with contributions from staff editor Melinda Fakuade and news editor Sean Collins. We'll see you Monday! |
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