WEBVTT - Forecasting El Niño’s Ferocity 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:04.479 Financial markets can no longer ignore the impacts of climate change, 0:00:04.620 --> 0:00:10.610 shifting consumer expectations and increasing regulatory scrutiny. These forces are 0:00:10.690 --> 0:00:16.730 reshaping industries, redefining risk and creating new opportunities for long-term 0:00:16.810 --> 0:00:22.810 value creation. Through conversations with industry leaders, investors and subject 0:00:22.850 --> 0:00:28.430 matter experts, we explore where sustainability is translating into measurable 0:00:28.690 --> 0:00:34.290 financial outcomes. Welcome to Sustainability Currents, brought to you by 0:00:34.670 --> 0:00:36.320 Bloomberg Intelligence. 0:00:40.540 --> 0:00:43.180 My name is Andy Stevenson, and I'm the Senior Climate 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.300 Analyst here at Bloomberg Intelligence. And today we're going to 0:00:46.340 --> 0:00:49.159 talk about all things El Nino. It's certainly a topic 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.379 really around the world that is driving a lot of attention. 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:56.900 And we're going to dig in deep here with my guest, Dr. 0:00:56.940 --> 0:01:01.000 Hansi Singh, founder and CEO of Planet AI. 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:02.360 Welcome to the program. 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.620 Thank you, Andrew. It's great to be here. Great. 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:07.950 Could you please tell the audience a little bit about 0:01:07.970 --> 0:01:09.330 your company and what you do? 0:01:09.510 --> 0:01:10.410 That would be really helpful. 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:16.130 Absolutely. So we do all things El Nino and anything 0:01:16.630 --> 0:01:20.730 sort of long-term in the climate system in terms of forecasting. 0:01:21.190 --> 0:01:26.210 So our specialty is not a seven-day weather forecast, but 0:01:26.290 --> 0:01:28.950 it is a forecast beyond that seven days. So anywhere 0:01:28.990 --> 0:01:32.360 from one week all the way out to about a year. 0:01:33.420 --> 0:01:36.000 And you know, I think that this is kind of 0:01:36.020 --> 0:01:40.539 an interesting area because there's not many people actively using 0:01:40.580 --> 0:01:44.320 this information. The one area that people are actively using 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:49.290 this information has been certain highly specialized hedge funds, for example. 0:01:49.990 --> 0:01:52.140 as well as certain energy trading desks as well. But 0:01:52.180 --> 0:01:55.640 this generally is just not an area of forecasting that 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:59.220 is used by the general public, used by your average business. 0:01:59.620 --> 0:02:01.700 And so, you know, I started this company because this 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:04.510 really felt like an opportunity. It's an area that's just 0:02:04.590 --> 0:02:08.230 advanced so much, you know, specifically in the last, you know, 0:02:08.290 --> 0:02:11.710 decade or so. And it's an area where, yeah, people 0:02:11.750 --> 0:02:14.130 are still not using the weather information that they need. 0:02:14.169 --> 0:02:16.320 And I think like You know, this is a sustainability 0:02:16.380 --> 0:02:20.410 podcast with climate change. This is really information that I 0:02:20.470 --> 0:02:26.929 believe more people need to use, specifically because resilience requires planning. 0:02:27.430 --> 0:02:30.090 And so in order to plan, you got to know 0:02:30.410 --> 0:02:33.230 what you're planning for. And so, you know, the great 0:02:33.270 --> 0:02:35.630 thing is there's so many companies out there now that 0:02:35.669 --> 0:02:40.710 are offering sort of climate, you know, resilience advice. but 0:02:40.730 --> 0:02:43.309 a lot of people, they also want to know, okay, 0:02:43.389 --> 0:02:45.030 I know what the next 20 years are going to 0:02:45.050 --> 0:02:48.090 look like, but what about the next year, right? How 0:02:48.110 --> 0:02:49.970 do I plan for that next year? And this is 0:02:50.010 --> 0:02:52.130 where we really come in. So we're in that sort 0:02:52.220 --> 0:02:53.060 of sweet spot. 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:53.940 Yeah. 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:54.120 Yeah. 0:02:54.139 --> 0:02:57.220 I mean, if you think about the reinsurance industry, that 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.799 is all they insure is one year. So that's like 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:02.579 the outer bound, effectively, that is the outer bound of 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:04.500 what they're doing. I mean, obviously, if you look at 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.780 catastrophic bonds, they can do multiple years, multiple years, but 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.220 they're really just doing one year and guessing for the 0:03:11.260 --> 0:03:14.700 rest of it, hoping for the best. And clearly, I mean, 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:17.440 there are many things valuable about being able to forecast 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:21.300 out a year, clearly, with respect to crops and everything else. 0:03:22.060 --> 0:03:24.280 But in the context of where we are today, which 0:03:24.340 --> 0:03:27.740 is sort of kind of walking into this El Nino situation, 0:03:28.180 --> 0:03:30.340 I think it's particularly valuable because this is. 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.150 A You tell me, it's the end of March. 0:03:33.410 --> 0:03:37.300 Is that when the actual El Nino season is going 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:39.200 to be kind of over and done with? 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:45.780 Yeah, March, April-ish. Yeah. Yeah, these things take a long 0:03:45.870 --> 0:03:51.330 time to dissipate. But, you know, definitely, like, so, you know, 0:03:51.350 --> 0:03:53.050 the lead up to this has been over the course 0:03:53.090 --> 0:03:56.680 of this year, right? Yeah. In January, that's when this 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.260 El Nino first started appearing in our forecasts. You know, 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.880 I started talking about it. It's very exciting when you're 0:04:02.900 --> 0:04:05.800 a seasonal forecaster and you see something like this coming up, right? 0:04:06.060 --> 0:04:08.460 You're like, oh, my gosh, it's an El Nino. So 0:04:08.500 --> 0:04:12.460 much predictability, so much, you know, like kind of weather 0:04:12.620 --> 0:04:15.700 anomalies that we can tell you about, you can plan for. 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:19.230 It's great, right? And, you know, we've been watching it 0:04:19.270 --> 0:04:21.630 sort of over the course of the last six months, 0:04:21.670 --> 0:04:23.910 the last eight months. And, yeah, it's just been getting 0:04:23.950 --> 0:04:26.910 stronger and stronger. Initially, you know, I was like, yeah, 0:04:26.950 --> 0:04:30.230 moderate El Nino. That was my January prediction. And then, 0:04:30.250 --> 0:04:31.650 you know, in a couple of months, I'm like, yeah, 0:04:31.670 --> 0:04:33.830 this looks like it's going to be pretty strong. And 0:04:33.870 --> 0:04:35.810 then a couple of months after that, oh, this is 0:04:35.850 --> 0:04:37.530 definitely in the super territory. 0:04:37.710 --> 0:04:38.029 Right. 0:04:38.070 --> 0:04:40.990 This is definitely. Now we're talking about Godzilla. Yeah. 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:42.180 Yeah, yeah. 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:46.450 And just so people on the podcast understand, a super 0:04:46.650 --> 0:04:50.830 El Nino is really surface temperatures above two Celsius above zero. normal, 0:04:50.890 --> 0:04:53.540 and this is 3.2 is what they're targeting now, maybe 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.620 even higher, right, in terms of what the surface temperature 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:59.100 of the oceans are going to end up at, which 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:02.500 puts them in the super duper El Nino category. 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:04.280 I don't know if there is one yet, but there 0:05:05.140 --> 0:05:06.000 probably should be. 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:12.320 If we're going, if two is super, 3.2 is on steroids, right? 0:05:12.500 --> 0:05:16.409 Yeah, unprecedented. I mean, you hear a lot of hyperbolic 0:05:16.470 --> 0:05:20.580 language around this, and I think that is like I mean, 0:05:21.020 --> 0:05:24.490 we have not seen this in the observational record before. 0:05:25.070 --> 0:05:26.990 And so, you know, it's a big deal. I mean, 0:05:27.029 --> 0:05:30.150 I think the other thing here too is that whenever 0:05:30.190 --> 0:05:32.089 people hear El Nino, I think there's a lot of 0:05:32.270 --> 0:05:37.020 fear about it. But really, you know, it's basically a 0:05:37.300 --> 0:05:41.160 pattern of climate variability, right? So when we say variability, 0:05:41.220 --> 0:05:43.340 it's like, you know, each year is a little bit 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:46.560 different than the last year. Of course, we're warming our planet. 0:05:46.620 --> 0:05:48.440 So that means that there's like a trend in that, 0:05:48.620 --> 0:05:50.160 you know, year to year, we see kind of this 0:05:50.220 --> 0:05:54.520 trend as well. But, you know, those year to year variations, like, 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:59.230 El Nino and La Ninas, they're responsible for some of those. 0:05:59.670 --> 0:06:02.690 And the nice thing about those particular modes of variability 0:06:02.710 --> 0:06:06.190 is that they're very predictable. And El Nino in some 0:06:06.230 --> 0:06:09.440 ways is actually associated with like, you know, a reprieve 0:06:09.630 --> 0:06:12.670 over some areas. So for example, you've probably noticed the 0:06:12.710 --> 0:06:17.089 Atlantic hurricane season is super chill this year, right? So, 0:06:17.150 --> 0:06:19.859 you know, I guess if I bought cat bonds for 0:06:20.100 --> 0:06:22.779 Atlantic hurricane activity, I would be doing pretty well. And 0:06:22.820 --> 0:06:25.800 I'd be really happy with myself right now. Because yeah, 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:29.210 that area is like with an El Nino, it tends 0:06:29.270 --> 0:06:33.650 to not form hurricanes as readily and have those hurricanes 0:06:33.850 --> 0:06:36.589 be making landfall. On the other hand, you know, if 0:06:36.610 --> 0:06:39.000 you had a port over on the coast of China, 0:06:39.100 --> 0:06:41.599 you sort of had a harrowing three months because there 0:06:41.660 --> 0:06:44.880 were a fair number of tropical cyclones that hit that region. 0:06:45.260 --> 0:06:48.260 And you hit maybe like even highlight how much rainfall. 0:06:48.420 --> 0:06:52.080 I mean, it's pretty substantial, some of these, the dumps 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:54.390 that they've seen in China and how that affects ports. 0:06:54.550 --> 0:06:57.570 Can you maybe give a little data on that or 0:06:57.750 --> 0:06:58.530 are you familiar with that? 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:03.970 Yeah, yeah. So when some of these tropical cyclones hit, 0:07:04.010 --> 0:07:07.490 we get sort of 24-hour rainfall anomalies that are on 0:07:07.529 --> 0:07:12.320 the order of, you know, 10 inches, right? So just 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:17.500 kind of these deluges that just kind of knock out operations. 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.360 And in addition to that, I mean, if the winds 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.390 are too high, I mean, any port is going to 0:07:23.430 --> 0:07:26.790 shut down as well, right? So a combination of those 0:07:26.910 --> 0:07:29.990 sorts of perils means that, yeah, you're going to have 0:07:30.030 --> 0:07:33.710 disruptions in shipping. So this is like a very clear 0:07:33.910 --> 0:07:36.550 impact of Dal Nino. The cool thing is, is that 0:07:36.870 --> 0:07:39.740 We're probably sort of past that time a little bit. 0:07:39.830 --> 0:07:43.100 So as the season wears on, what tends to happen 0:07:43.150 --> 0:07:48.380 with El Ninos is that, you know, the East Pacific 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:52.060 is very warm. The West Pacific often forms these kind 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:56.100 of cooler centers to it. And the circulation really strengthens. 0:07:56.140 --> 0:07:58.420 So what tends to happen is over those warm regions 0:07:58.460 --> 0:08:01.000 in the Pacific, you form these nice tropical cyclones. This 0:08:01.060 --> 0:08:02.860 is one of the reasons why like Hawaii has been 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:05.640 hit and Hawaii is probably still in the crosshairs for 0:08:05.660 --> 0:08:10.090 the next few months. But, you know, if you're in China, 0:08:10.350 --> 0:08:13.230 often what you'll see is that the cyclones will form 0:08:13.290 --> 0:08:15.630 over the Central Pacific and then they'll kind of arc 0:08:15.670 --> 0:08:19.710 away from China. So, you know, they will be getting 0:08:19.740 --> 0:08:22.560 a reprieve, which is good for them, I think. And 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.040 in some ways, yeah, like one of the stories of 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:30.140 El Nino is not necessarily tropical cyclones because those actually 0:08:30.340 --> 0:08:32.380 like other than, you know, early in the season where 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:34.540 we tend to see a lot over China, it tends 0:08:34.580 --> 0:08:36.040 to actually be mellower globally. 0:08:37.970 --> 0:08:41.240 Sure. Unless you live in Hawaii. Yeah. 0:08:41.260 --> 0:08:43.660 Yeah. Do you live in Hawaii, Andrew? 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:46.920 Are you? I don't. But, you know, I like to visit. 0:08:47.020 --> 0:08:50.179 But I mean, this summer they've had three basically big storms. Right. 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:52.400 I mean, March was the first one. But then you've 0:08:52.450 --> 0:08:55.630 had two in the last three weeks. The first one 0:08:55.730 --> 0:08:57.950 knocked out 20 percent of the power grid. This one 0:08:57.990 --> 0:09:00.590 knocked out about 12 percent of the power grid. And 0:09:00.660 --> 0:09:04.250 so even if your island is protected, you know, you're 0:09:04.950 --> 0:09:07.770 sharing a lot of electricity around. So you also need 0:09:08.330 --> 0:09:12.350 to be, you know, that affects obviously tourism and just 0:09:12.410 --> 0:09:15.890 a lot of general commerce beyond the property damage, right? 0:09:15.929 --> 0:09:18.670 For some place like Hawaii, which, you know, the property 0:09:18.690 --> 0:09:21.709 damage is probably not the biggest loss when you talk 0:09:21.730 --> 0:09:25.110 about the billions of dollars of tourism that goes through 0:09:25.150 --> 0:09:25.990 that part of. 0:09:25.970 --> 0:09:26.750 The world, right? 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.010 Absolutely. And, you know, speaking of tourism, I think this 0:09:31.110 --> 0:09:34.190 is another area that's quite interesting, right, when it comes 0:09:34.250 --> 0:09:37.130 to the Super El Nino. So, you know, this summer, 0:09:37.730 --> 0:09:41.760 Europe has had quite a summer. Now, I can't necessarily 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:44.579 say that that's a Super El Nino thing, though this 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.680 did show up in our forecasts. It did show up 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.500 that Europe was going to be quite dry today. That 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:52.500 they were going to have a dry winter, a dry 0:09:52.580 --> 0:09:55.010 spring being a water deficit. And of course, that sets 0:09:55.050 --> 0:09:58.430 you up for some of these impacts that we saw, 0:09:58.470 --> 0:10:02.479 which is heat and wildfire. So those did show up 0:10:02.540 --> 0:10:07.370 in forecasts. And we're seeing the impacts of that likely 0:10:07.450 --> 0:10:10.190 on tourism. If you think like an idyllic summer in 0:10:10.290 --> 0:10:14.069 Europe trip, I just think that that is not often 0:10:14.110 --> 0:10:17.410 the situation that you should expect anymore. That's not a given. Yeah. 0:10:18.179 --> 0:10:18.800 Yeah, I agree. 0:10:18.860 --> 0:10:22.830 We've done some research on this, on how the vacation 0:10:22.850 --> 0:10:25.750 season is widening in Europe. People are not going in 0:10:25.809 --> 0:10:29.130 August anymore. They're going in November and they're going in March, 0:10:29.670 --> 0:10:33.530 which paradoxically makes it a better investment for like an Airbnb. 0:10:33.750 --> 0:10:36.240 It's strangely enough, you know, if you think about they, 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:38.500 instead of making a lot of money in one month, 0:10:38.540 --> 0:10:40.760 they make a lot more, you know, a broader amount, 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.620 a longer, have a longer holiday horizon to take that from. 0:10:44.730 --> 0:10:46.510 But But just to echo what you're. 0:10:46.330 --> 0:10:49.910 Saying on the heat, like in France, it was off 0:10:49.929 --> 0:10:53.290 the chart. Like we think of 2003 as being their 0:10:53.309 --> 0:10:56.530 kind of big year for heat. And this year just 0:10:56.650 --> 0:10:59.290 blew it away in terms of days above 90 degrees. 0:10:59.450 --> 0:11:03.210 And my understanding is that, and correct me if I'm wrong, 0:11:03.250 --> 0:11:05.750 is that 2027 is not going to be much better, right? 0:11:05.820 --> 0:11:09.800 Isn't it still for Europe a concern or is that, 0:11:10.140 --> 0:11:12.809 should they get a break next year after what happened 0:11:12.830 --> 0:11:13.109 this year? 0:11:13.490 --> 0:11:17.560 So I, at this point, I haven't looked at the 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.219 temperature forecast. However, I have been keeping an eye on 0:11:20.260 --> 0:11:24.760 the rainfall and it looks like they will be getting 0:11:24.780 --> 0:11:28.970 a decent amount of rainfall. So they might break out 0:11:29.290 --> 0:11:31.290 Or they almost certainly will break out of this drought. 0:11:31.650 --> 0:11:34.870 I mean, right now, the Danube and the Rhine are very, 0:11:34.929 --> 0:11:37.380 very low in terms of water levels. And of course, 0:11:37.420 --> 0:11:40.339 this is like disrupting trade and movement of goods in 0:11:40.380 --> 0:11:45.479 that region, interestingly. And so I think that some of 0:11:45.540 --> 0:11:49.550 those problems will be reduced. I mean, one thing that 0:11:49.570 --> 0:11:52.170 we often see with El Ninos, I mean, this is 0:11:52.210 --> 0:11:55.670 a similar situation with California. I think California right now 0:11:55.740 --> 0:11:57.400 actually has plenty of water, but they're going to get 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:00.420 even more, right, this coming year. So this is another 0:12:00.580 --> 0:12:03.000 area that's going to see, you know, a lot of 0:12:03.179 --> 0:12:06.720 excess rainfall with this coming El Nino. Or with this 0:12:06.860 --> 0:12:10.620 El Nino as it grows. And so, you know, this 0:12:10.660 --> 0:12:13.770 year they're not going to have water problems. But, you know, 0:12:13.870 --> 0:12:16.089 the question is, OK, so they're going to get a 0:12:16.130 --> 0:12:17.510 lot of rain. There's going to be a lot of 0:12:17.550 --> 0:12:21.980 vegetation growth. And what is that? That's fuel for future fires. Right. 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:22.220 Sure. 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:26.020 So, I mean, it's one of those things where we 0:12:26.140 --> 0:12:29.870 often see these cycles happen. The other thing where, you know, 0:12:29.910 --> 0:12:32.209 kind of previous fire years interact with what's going to 0:12:32.230 --> 0:12:34.710 happen this year, which is, you know, a lot of rainfall, 0:12:35.620 --> 0:12:39.220 is that we often see landslides, particularly over regions that 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:40.000 previously burned. 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:40.800 Right. 0:12:40.820 --> 0:12:45.740 So burned areas tend to have soils that do not 0:12:46.100 --> 0:12:48.980 hold water very well. And so because of that, you 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:52.460 just get these situations where the land just starts like 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:56.330 sloughing off. And so, you know, you'll get flooding, you'll 0:12:56.350 --> 0:13:02.530 get landslides, erosion, everything. And so, yeah, I mean, we're 0:13:02.580 --> 0:13:05.360 just kind of in this cycle, it feels like sometimes of, 0:13:05.500 --> 0:13:09.260 you know, one problematic thing after another. 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:13.300 Yeah, people like their Goldilocks climate. They don't like this 0:13:13.450 --> 0:13:16.950 too hot and too cold situation, which is what we're 0:13:17.010 --> 0:13:19.010 running at. I just wanted to kind of throw a 0:13:19.030 --> 0:13:21.770 statistic at you, if just, you may already know this, 0:13:21.809 --> 0:13:25.110 but France, this number of day, degree days above 90 0:13:25.110 --> 0:13:29.470 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, the peak in 2003 was 150 0:13:29.470 --> 0:13:32.880 degree days, and we are at now 230 degree days. 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:37.380 So it is, and the other days, the other years 0:13:37.420 --> 0:13:39.840 look tiny, you know, so the average is somewhere around 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:41.479 75 or something like that, maybe 70. 0:13:41.460 --> 0:13:42.990 So it's, It's. 0:13:42.929 --> 0:13:45.000 Really on an order of something that we have not 0:13:45.100 --> 0:13:48.099 seen before. I wanted to go back to your comments 0:13:48.140 --> 0:13:49.819 on California because I want to kind of play this 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.120 out for people so they understand the progression of what 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:56.760 you're talking about with respect to how this, it's almost 0:13:56.860 --> 0:14:00.370 like how a rainy season becomes a wildfire, you know, 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:01.590 like that kind of thing. 0:14:01.970 --> 0:14:05.570 So let's go to, let's start with where we. 0:14:05.590 --> 0:14:07.770 Are now in terms of the rain. When do you 0:14:07.809 --> 0:14:12.340 think that rain will happen? generate the vegetation that is 0:14:12.500 --> 0:14:16.520 ultimately the fuel, right, for another cycle of, can you 0:14:16.540 --> 0:14:18.319 kind of walk through the timeline of that? 0:14:18.980 --> 0:14:19.480 Absolutely. 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.810 So this is like kind of a several year process, 0:14:23.890 --> 0:14:25.950 though it could be as early as next year. So 0:14:26.010 --> 0:14:28.970 here's the situation. Right now, California has plenty of water 0:14:30.410 --> 0:14:33.950 and they're about to get a ton more over, you know, 0:14:34.330 --> 0:14:38.550 the next three to five months. So in terms of 0:14:38.610 --> 0:14:43.920 that excess rainfall, you know, California has an interesting sort 0:14:43.940 --> 0:14:47.480 of set of ecosystems. When you get a lot of rainfall, yeah, 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:49.890 the trees are happy, but what tends to grow a 0:14:49.930 --> 0:14:53.240 lot is just shrubs. You know, a lot of just, 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:57.400 you know, excess low-lying vegetation. Well, those shrubs don't necessarily 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:00.400 have super deep roots. And so as soon as conditions 0:15:00.450 --> 0:15:03.630 get dry again, they will die. And they will die, 0:15:03.690 --> 0:15:06.370 they will dry out, and that is then the fuel 0:15:06.410 --> 0:15:10.050 for the next fire. When does this happen? Well, the 0:15:10.090 --> 0:15:12.960 dry season in California tends to be from, say, like, 0:15:13.170 --> 0:15:18.320 you know, March, April, all the way to, you know, 0:15:18.700 --> 0:15:19.500 November or December. 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:19.600 Okay. 0:15:19.930 --> 0:15:23.150 So it's a long dry season. So depending on how 0:15:23.230 --> 0:15:27.390 next year's dry season is, how long it is, how 0:15:27.450 --> 0:15:29.410 dry it is, and a lot of that how dry 0:15:29.430 --> 0:15:31.430 it is depends on how hot it is, right? So 0:15:32.030 --> 0:15:35.380 if there's a lot of vegetation, but, you know, temperatures 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:37.760 are cool, then that vegetation takes a lot longer to 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.600 dry out. Whereas if it's hot, it will dry out 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.860 so fast and you will just make tinder. And so 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:48.120 by essentially the end of the year, you know, if 0:15:48.340 --> 0:15:52.080 it starts raining in October, great. Maybe they can avoid 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.420 some of sort of the major fire catastrophes next year. 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.450 But if not, you know, if it takes until December 0:15:58.490 --> 0:16:01.330 or even January 2028, then that's when we're going to 0:16:01.350 --> 0:16:04.250 see some really high risks. So if we have a 0:16:04.330 --> 0:16:09.170 hot and dry year, you know, dry season this coming year, 0:16:09.950 --> 0:16:12.930 whatever vegetation forms right now is going to end up, 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:15.360 you know, really being a hazard for them. 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:16.310 I got you. 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:18.420 And can you just highlight like a year where we had, 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:21.979 you know, a horrendous wildfire year that played out like this? 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:24.460 Is there a year in the past that you can 0:16:24.540 --> 0:16:26.360 think of that would be representative? 0:16:26.860 --> 0:16:31.590 So L.A., the L.A. fires. So those fires were in, 0:16:31.710 --> 0:16:36.980 I believe it was This was last year, 2025. 0:16:36.980 --> 0:16:38.340 Yeah, January 25th. 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.739 And so, okay, so this is actually, this kind of 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.840 goes a little bit with the El Nino narrative, though 0:16:45.180 --> 0:16:47.640 it's interesting. So there was a 23-24 super El Nino. 0:16:47.660 --> 0:16:53.330 The impacts of that over California were not huge, interestingly. 0:16:54.170 --> 0:16:58.470 But they did get a ton of rainfall in early 2024. 0:16:58.450 --> 0:17:05.840 So there was a ton of vegetation. And then, you know, 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:10.440 after that excess rainfall in early 2024, then there was 0:17:10.460 --> 0:17:13.449 sort of, you know, a lot of vegetation that grew 0:17:13.470 --> 0:17:16.790 and then that vegetation dried out. Now, if you were 0:17:16.850 --> 0:17:20.669 looking at seasonal forecasts and thinking about what it was 0:17:20.710 --> 0:17:24.670 going to finally start raining in 2024, you could even 0:17:24.770 --> 0:17:27.300 see like quite early in the season that it was 0:17:27.340 --> 0:17:30.340 just looking dry, dry, dry. When is it going to start? 0:17:30.380 --> 0:17:33.450 When is it going to start? And so, yeah, even like, 0:17:33.490 --> 0:17:36.550 you know, it was very clear October, November and December 0:17:36.590 --> 0:17:39.230 were going to be like drier than usual months. Now, 0:17:39.300 --> 0:17:41.780 here's the thing with California, you know, you can always 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:43.960 get lucky and you can get some big weather system 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:46.880 that moves in. So even if the fundamentals are like 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.800 dry conditions, you can still sometimes see, you know, oh, yeah, 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.100 the system broken. And now, you know, we're we're. in 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:57.580 a good position. In this case, that didn't happen. And so, yeah, 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.100 by the time we got to January, things were, you know, 0:18:01.340 --> 0:18:06.700 so dry that then there was a Santa Ana wind event. 0:18:07.020 --> 0:18:09.780 And that often tends to be the instigating event for 0:18:10.619 --> 0:18:14.369 fire weather in that region. And so, yeah, the conditions 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:16.609 were sort of perfect. We had this period early in 0:18:16.630 --> 0:18:18.350 the year where there was a lot of rain, a 0:18:18.390 --> 0:18:21.250 lot of vegetation grew, and then a long dry period 0:18:21.290 --> 0:18:25.170 where that vegetation dried out. And, you know, no early 0:18:25.250 --> 0:18:29.430 reprieve from that dryness with, you know, the wet season starting. 0:18:29.630 --> 0:18:32.190 And so by January, we were just in this very 0:18:32.230 --> 0:18:35.030 kind of danger zone. And the interesting thing about that 0:18:35.210 --> 0:18:39.070 is that Santa Anas, they tend to be strongest in 0:18:39.109 --> 0:18:40.130 December and January. 0:18:40.550 --> 0:18:42.010 Okay. 0:18:42.030 --> 0:18:44.190 So essentially, like, I mean. 0:18:44.230 --> 0:18:47.530 You're saying it's the pump is primed if... You don't 0:18:47.570 --> 0:18:50.770 get the rainfall by November. You're in the lights flashing 0:18:50.810 --> 0:18:51.970 at least orange. 0:18:52.150 --> 0:18:55.929 Yeah. Like for that, for the state of California, I mean, 0:18:55.970 --> 0:18:59.340 this is one of those things where like it's probably 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.340 a good idea to expect a lot of fire weather 0:19:02.940 --> 0:19:04.720 in December and January. 0:19:04.740 --> 0:19:04.840 Right. 0:19:05.630 --> 0:19:08.920 And to really be on the lookout for like, okay, 0:19:08.940 --> 0:19:11.439 am I going to get these wins? And do I 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.240 have a lot of fuel lying around? I mean, if 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.700 those two things are satisfied, then like, yeah, it really 0:19:17.740 --> 0:19:20.840 should be like everybody is on call and prepared for this. 0:19:20.980 --> 0:19:21.260 Sure. 0:19:21.420 --> 0:19:24.020 I mean, obviously the utilities are on the hook these 0:19:24.060 --> 0:19:27.460 days for that repair. So they need to be as 0:19:28.060 --> 0:19:30.440 on high alert as possible. It's still a pretty frustrating 0:19:31.530 --> 0:19:33.240 thing for them to have to do. There's like tens 0:19:33.290 --> 0:19:38.619 of thousands of miles of grid that they have to prune. 0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:40.830 So it's not the easiest task in the world to 0:19:40.869 --> 0:19:43.230 get that done. I want to do one more thing 0:19:43.290 --> 0:19:46.250 on California because it is just getting battered right now 0:19:46.450 --> 0:19:49.250 on the coast, which is very new. 0:19:49.630 --> 0:19:49.810 Right? 0:19:49.850 --> 0:19:52.409 The amount of flood insurance in California, I think it's 1.3% 0:19:52.410 --> 0:19:56.209 or something like that. If homes have flood insurance, it's 0:19:56.270 --> 0:20:01.060 not something that they really budget for. And clearly that's 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:04.430 happening presumably because of El Nino that we're getting these 0:20:04.990 --> 0:20:09.520 specific events. Can you maybe highlight how that is I mean, 0:20:09.540 --> 0:20:11.440 this is this is sort of new territory for a 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.200 lot of those communities. They've never seen that this kind of, 0:20:14.210 --> 0:20:18.030 you know, storms are effectively storm surge right on the 0:20:18.230 --> 0:20:19.190 on the Pacific coast. 0:20:19.470 --> 0:20:23.350 Yeah. So this is a really interesting year where we 0:20:23.390 --> 0:20:26.940 have this big El Nino and we sort of have 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.460 this like kind of very warm water all down the 0:20:30.500 --> 0:20:34.410 coast of California and, you know, even extending up here. So, 0:20:34.510 --> 0:20:38.450 for example, here I'm in Seattle, Washington. We usually have like, 0:20:38.490 --> 0:20:41.930 you know, very kind of like the air is very dry. 0:20:42.030 --> 0:20:44.910 Our relative humidity is very low. It just feels like 0:20:45.190 --> 0:20:47.290 when it's 70 degrees or 80 degrees here, it just 0:20:47.310 --> 0:20:51.409 feels very like fresh because the humidity is low. Well, 0:20:51.490 --> 0:20:53.699 guess what? We've had kind of a muggy year. And 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:56.840 that is literally because we have this sort of marine 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:00.810 heat wave. sitting off of our coast right now. And 0:21:00.850 --> 0:21:03.990 that extends all the way to California. Now, this kind 0:21:04.010 --> 0:21:07.170 of marine heat wave region, it's a region where, you know, 0:21:07.190 --> 0:21:10.990 the ocean temperatures are high. So guess what? Tropical cyclones 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:17.639 can form there. And that then puts California, you know, 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:22.919 Baja California, the west coast of Mexico, all in the 0:21:22.940 --> 0:21:24.160 crosshairs this year. 0:21:24.180 --> 0:21:26.970