Experts seek clues to hurricane births
The News Review:
- Experts seek clues to hurricane births
- Florida Lawmakers Raise Cap For Hurricane Fund to $41B.
- State Farm Settles Katrina Claims in Mississippi
Experts seek clues to hurricane births
BBC News – Jan 23, 2007
“I had a lot of friends and relatives who really suffered when Hurricane Katrina hit New rleans” he said. “If we can get a better understanding of how these things form here in West Africa we’ll be able to extend our forecasting and give people more time to get out of the way. Mr Jenkins has swapped his job in Howard University in Washington DC for Dakar university in Senegal. With his colleagues he watches a short animated film again and again – satellite images of clouds over West Africa; the swirling turbulent masses of moisture mixing and blending and separating in a mind-bogglingly complicated dance. utside beneath the real black and grey clouds wind turbines churned harvesting data that is helping the scientists make sense of their mission… They get their initial power and instability from the difference in temperature between the very hot Sahara air and the substantially cooler air along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. Most peter out shedding their energy along the way but a few – about 10% – build power becoming great hulking behemoths that smash their way through the Caribbean Islands and into the United States and Mexico. Mr Jenkins and his team want to know what makes a hurricane. To do it they assembled an impressive array of technology: Nasa weather satellites provided sophisticated imagery from above; radars based in Senegal and the Cape Verde Islands further west gave a long-range view from the ground. ne of the radar analysts atmospheric scientist Paul Kucera said the West African weather systems are poorly understood. “What we’re learning is how storms evolve in this part of the region.
Florida Lawmakers Raise Cap For Hurricane Fund to $41B.
Free with registration – Bond Buyer – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jan 23, 2007
(23-JAN-07) The Bond Buyer. — The Florida Legislature yesterday passed a major property insurance reform bill with the potential to boost the hurricane claims paying ability of the Florida Hurricane Catastrop.
State Farm Settles Katrina Claims in Mississippi
New York Times – Jan 23, 2007
Those settlements could add several hundred million dollars for rebuilding. Since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 companies have paid $5. 3 billion for damage to more than 330000 homes in Mississippi and $10. 3 billion for nearly a million homes in Louisiana. But State Farm and other companies balked at paying for the concentration of losses along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast and in New rleans contending that their policies did not cover damage from flooding. In many cases the insurers also argued that their standard coverage against wind damage was nullified for homes that were battered both by surging flood waters and the high winds of the hurricane… Lawyers for the storm victims had worried that the insurance companies would fight every case through the courts and that it would take years to resolve the coverage disputes. But the insurers became tired of being called insensitive and uncaring about the victims of Hurricane Katrina. In the first jury trial on the hurricane damage a little more than a week ago Judge Senter said State Farm failed to prove its case and the jury ordered the company to pay $2. 5 million in punitive damage to a couple in Biloxi. The judge also awarded the couple the full value of their insurance policy $223000. State Farm had maintained it owed them nothing. “Every insurance company wants to settle these cases as fast as possible” said the general counsel of another big insurance company shortly before the jury’s decision.