NEWS · B2 Level - Part 5

One important weather database is being retired

Every year, as we get closer to summer, it also means the start of a hurricane season.

Level: B2 · 35 sentences

Transcript

  1. Every year, as we get closer to summer, it also means the start of a hurricane season.
  2. Now, the official dates have historically been June 1st through November 30th for the storms,
  3. but recent forecasting models are predicting an earlier start to a busier than usual hurricane season
  4. with 17 named storms already predicted.
  5. We're learning about these predictions just as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAH...
  6. announced its public database for tracking the cost of extreme weather and climate events is being archived and no longer updated
  7. because of staffing shortages from government employee reductions, NOAH is pairing down the services it provides.
  8. Our Allison Chinchar tells us more about the important role this data played.
  9. NOAH has been tracking billion-dollar disasters since 1980. And there have been plenty of them.
  10. A total of 403 billion dollar disasters since they began tracking.
  11. But they vary across the country. This is why it's so important to have these disasters tracked.
  12. Take last year for example. This is 2024.
  13. All of the natural disasters that took place that cost at least 1 billion worth of damage.
  14. You can see five of them were tropical systems.
  15. But we also had tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, snowstorms, and even flooding.
  16. But here's the thing.
  17. It's important to see these maps to notice whether or not there are trends,
  18. if more of these disasters are happening in one place or another, or if one region continues to see them.
  19. This is why, look at this.
  20. This is just from 2024.
  21. If we based all of the natural disasters off of this map alone,
  22. you might think, "Hey, they never happen in the Northeast or the Mid-Atlantic or even out to the West."
  23. But when you go back to look at previous years, you will notice that that completely changes.
  24. That's why it's so important to have a lot of these maps for the information they provide.
  25. It's also important to be able to look at year over year or even decade over decade.
  26. We may have had 400 in total, but not every decade is the same.
  27. For example, in the 1980s, they had a total of 33 billion dollar disasters.
  28. You go to the 90s, that jumps to 57. A decade later, 67.
  29. Last decade, 131.
  30. Now we look at this decade up to 115.
  31. That's more than several of these other decades in total
  32. and we only have half of a decade worth of data right now.
  33. So it's important to have a lot of this information
  34. so that we can look at not only where disasters have happened in the past but where they could end up happening in the future
  35. and whether or not the frequency rates are going up as well.