Loss of key US satellite data could send hurricane forecasting back 'decades'

It's part of the Administration's war on ... Florida?

It could help lower insurance costs.

That's not at all how insurance companies price risk. Unknown risk is more risk, and more risk is more expensive. Therefore, unknown hurricane data is more risky and thus more expensive.

If you know your car's engine is going to need replaced after exactly 100,000 miles, you know to save up for a new engine or a new car - and you know how long you have to save, so you can precisely set aside an appropriate figure every month.

If you know your car's engine will die sometime within the next 15,000 miles, you know you need to start saving up immediately, but b/c you don't know when in the next 15,000 miles you have to rush your saving.

If you have no idea when your car's engine is going to die, you are likely to end up dead engine and little to no savings.

Hurricane risk has been grossly exaggerated for years. Every year people say it will be the end of Florida as we know it. But those promised hurricanes never come. The worst is some flooding and damage at coastal areas, but it’s always anti-climactic.

The real reason insurance is high is because of fraudulent claim risk. Hurricanes themselves are more or less a solved problem in Florida. That data is useless.

> Hurricane risk has been grossly exaggerated for years

Year-over-year, economic impacts and disruptions due to tropical cyclones are dramatically rising. Most of this is an exposure issue. But long-tail events - like Andrew's utter devastation of Homestead in 1992 or Katrina's unique confluence of storm surge in urban/suburban parishes in LA - can and do happen.

One day, there will be another Galveston or Homestead.

There won’t be another Andrew because the building codes were changed so that all new construction must withstand category 5 storm force, which when Andrew came around was not a requirement. Over time, there is a natural selection that occurs where destroyed buildings are replaced with stronger buildings with stricter codes.