Jonathan Kinghorn

With huge acreages, immense palls of smoke, and dramatic images, big wildfires make headlines.

In Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem, The Jabberwocky, “the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”

Shortly before midnight on March 12, 1928, one of the dams supplying Los Angeles with water collapsed.

Spawned by severe thunderstorms, tornadoes are among the most destructive forces in nature.

The UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction recommends ways to reduce risk and increase resilience.

The term “concrete jungle” evidently dates back to the 1940s, and it is very apt.

On December 27, 1722, an earthquake, possibly of M7.8, devastated the Algarve region of southern Portugal.

We recently published our 750th blog and that is an opportunity to review some of our great content.

In 1987 BBC forecaster Michael Fish reassured viewers that there was no hurricane coming to the UK.

The highest earthquake hazard in the continental U.S. is largely associated with California.

The year 1356 may seem a long time ago, but in terms of the geologic time scale, it is very recent.

September 11, 2001—9/11—is one of those dates so impactful that most people remember where they were.

Tropical cyclones are usually solitary phenomena, but on rare occasions they can get up close and personal.

February 8, 1750, saw London shaken both by the publication of a notorious novella and by an earthquake.

The global protection gap between economic and insured losses results in an enormous cost to society.

Tornadoes can bring winds of more than 200 mph and are some of the most destructive forces in nature.

Palu, a city of more than 330,000 people on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, was struck by a major earthquake and tsunami one year ago on September 28, 2018.

Before there were accepted scientific explanations for them, earthquakes were generally blamed on angry gods or the behavior of enormous mythical creatures.

Charles Darwin's voyage on H.M.S. Beagle is justly famous, but the subsequent achievements of that ship's captain, Robert Fitzroy, are not so well known.

Learn how AIR’s Model Builder™ simplifies the catastrophe model development process and makes it easy to implement your own view of risk.

My Memorial Day weekend was spent on the coast of southern Maine where a short section of shoreline is regularly damaged by storm surge.

It is hard to believe, but since In Focus was launched on February 24, 2014, we have published 500 blogs!

Tornadoes have been hitting U.S. headlines recently as unusually severe weather is experienced in the Midwest and above-average tornado activity was noted earlier in the year.

Tomorrow, May 31, is also National Dam Safety Awareness Day in the U.S. One of its goals is to highlight what people can do to prevent catastrophic dam failures and to lessen the impact should one occur.

AIR has a long and proud history of sending out engineering teams to conduct damage surveys in the wake of major catastrophe events.

Seismic hazard maps use all available seismological and geological information to convey potential maximum expected ground motions over a particular period of time.

The most powerful storm to strike the Indian subcontinent in two decades, Tropical Cyclone Fani, made landfall on the coast of the state of Odisha around 8 a.m. local time on May 3.

For the second time in two years, Canada is experiencing major flooding. The most seriously impacted areas are in Ontario and Quebec, but parts of New Brunswick are also affected.

Wildfires need three things—conducive weather, a source of ignition, and a supply of fuel.

The Philippines has experienced two significant earthquakes this week, which is a reminder that it is located in one of the world’s most seismically active regions.

On April 19 the National Hurricane Center (NHC) announced that it has now determined that Hurricane Michael's estimated intensity at landfall was 160 mph—enough to push Michael over the line to become a Category 5 storm.

The tragic fire this week at Notre Dame in Paris is a reminder that, while subject to the same natural catastrophe perils as modern structures nearby, historic buildings are at additional risk when undergoing renovation.

Forty-five years ago, the United States' worst tornado outbreak of the 20th century occurred. Although they can occur at any time of the year, tornadoes are most common between April and June.

In June 2018 a stadium full of partisan soccer fans jumping with excitement as their team scored a surprise World Cup victory over Germany in Mexico City registered as an earthquake. Find out why.

Each year, farmers face myriad potential perils to their crops: drought, waterlogging, frost, and hail to name a few.

Learn how catastrophe modeling can help estimate the economic impact of extreme events.

Cities and local governments are increasingly faced with large, unexpected costs from natural catastrophes. 100 Resilient Cities seeks to help cities become more resilient in the face of these significant unplanned expenditures.

With minimal vertical wind shear and a long fetch of warm water, Typhoon Haiyan had a lengthy runway to spin up to super typhoon status before it made landfall in the Philippines on November 7, 2013.

The catastrophic earthquake expected to strike the San Andreas Fault is not the only major earthquake California needs to prepare for.

Typically, about 10,000 wildfires occur annually in California, but the frequency of fire ignitions increases rather sharply during the dry and windy months of July and August.

Six tons is twice as heavy as three tons, and 60 mph is twice as fast as 30 mph—so why do M6.0 earthquakes release so much more than twice the destructive energy of M3.0 temblors?

On May 27 dramatic flash flooding wreaked havoc in the historic center of Ellicott City, 13 miles west of Baltimore in Maryland. This event hit the headlines, thanks to dramatic video footage and because it is even worse than the major flooding in July 2016.

Ten years ago today, the costliest severe thunderstorm outbreak to strike Europe since the 1984 Munich hailstorm began.

AIR shares what we’ve learned in the past 12 years about the importance of model stability in the face of high loss variability in Weathering Hurricane Variability in a Warm Atlantic.

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey dumped some 30 trillion gallons of water over the Houston, TX, area. How much water is that? What were Harvey's impacts? How many homeowners with flooded homes had flood insurance? What can be done?

When Tropical Cyclone Kelvin hit Western Australia in February and delivered heavy rainfall to the Kimberley coast it thrust an unfamiliar term into the headlines—"the brown ocean effect."

There were 17 named Atlantic storms in 2017, and if we have as many again this year they will be called Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto, Florence, Gordon, Helene, Isaac, Joyce, Kirk, Leslie, Michael, Nadine, Oscar, Patty, and Rafael.

We expect the earth beneath our feet to be solid ground, but there are circumstances in which it can behave more like a thick soup.

Flood defenses come in many forms and do a great job of protecting lives and property, but they are expensive, require maintenance, and can fail.

It's not a word you hear every day, and you may not have encountered it before, but bombogenesis is very much in the headlines at the moment.

Five years ago Hurricane Sandy made a sharp left turn and slammed into the coast of New Jersey. While a total of 24 states were affected, Sandy will be remembered not for wind damage, but flooding.

As Typhoon Lan approached Honshu on Saturday, October 21, Japanese researchers made their first flight into the eye of a tropical cyclone.

Among the products and services it has updated for the 2017 hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) included a smaller cone of uncertainty. What does that mean?

Twenty-five years ago on August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew slammed into Florida and became the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. What would the consequences be for the insurance industry if an Andrew-like Category 5 hurricane were to strike Miami today?

While Peru's building codes are now quite good, many commercial structures in the region predate them and most residential structures in the country are unlikely to have been built in compliance.

Recovery from a major earthquake, or indeed any extreme event, is always a lengthy process, even for wealthy and developed countries. An earthquake fades from the headlines after a few weeks, but recovery in the impacted region can continue for years.

Before dawn on Saturday April 1, 2017, rain drenched the Andes Mountains in southwestern Colombia. In just a few hours, 130 mm fell—about a third of the region’s average for the whole of March.

Whenever I have to clear snow off my driveway I am reminded how much I prefer rain because it soaks into the ground or runs off without me having to do anything.

I blogged about the risk of dam failure a couple of years ago, but the topic is in the news again, with the possible failure of the Oroville Dam in California hitting the headlines.

Twelve of Thailand's 14 southern provinces are currently experiencing major flooding, resulting from several days of heavy precipitation from an active northeast monsoon that has been covering the region and the Gulf of Thailand since December 1.

At 5.59 a.m. local time on November 22, a powerful earthquake hit 37 km (23 miles) east-southeast of Namie in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture; strong tremors were felt as far away as Tokyo, 270 km (168 miles) to the south.

Atmospheric rivers hit the headlines from time to time.

My father could remember standing night after night in his back yard, 20 miles from London, watching the orange glow in the sky as the city burned as a result of bombing during World War Two.

When a hurricane makes landfall, the greatest threat to life and property is sometimes storm surge rather than wind.

Officials are just beginning to assess the damage in Fort McMurray following the massive devastation caused by the wildfire that began on May 1.

As this year's hurricane season approaches, many are wondering if the 10-year drought of major hurricane landfalls experienced by the U.S. will come to an end.

Hailstorms can be highly localized and last for just minutes, but as farmers are well aware, they can do a lot of damage in a short time.

The details of what happened after the two bombings in Brussels on Tuesday morning are now well known, and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Only a fraction of the total economic risk from natural disasters is covered by the insurance industry today.

Imagine a group of young kids learning how to protect buildings during earthquakes, studying the best place along a river to site a bridge, analyzing traffic flow, developing procedures for cleaning up an oil spill, or designing a model mag-lev train.

Thanks to Storm Desmond and the recent flooding in the north of England and Scotland, flood defenses are a hot topic.

GeoHazards International (GHI) is an independent California-based charity with a mission to promote the adoption of modern building codes, land-use planning, science and engineering education, and innovative risk reduction techniques among the world’s poor and underserved communities.

Several weeks of exceptionally heavy rain have brought major flooding to the state of Tamil Nadu in India and devastation to its capital of Chennai, India's fifth largest city.

In size and population, Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world. Its principal natural hazard, flood, has for the most part occurred historically in areas where exposure values and insurance penetration are low.

The double whammy hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 broke all sorts of records and left the insurance industry wondering if a new normal was establishing itself in the Atlantic basin. Has it?

In the recent AIR Currents article, Katrina 2015, AIR asks what levels of damage could be expected if a storm with the intensity, size, and track of 2005's Hurricane Katrina were to recur today.

The Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters publishes an Annual Disaster Review to provide valuable information on the occurrence of natural disasters and their impacts on society.

On Wednesday, September 9, 2015, Tom Bolt, a director at Lloyd's of London, sent 15 identical cars on a 1,000-mile road trip to the Reinsurance Rendezvous conference in Monte Carlo.

Successful hurricane forecasting requires a clear understanding of what is going on inside a tropical cyclone system and the various forces driving its development. Detailed and accurate data about wind speeds, air pressure, humidity, sea surface temperatures, and a host of other factors are needed to build this picture.

For centuries we have fought flooding with defenses and suffered the consequences when they fail. But increasingly engineers and designers are looking into sustainable ways to cope with floodwater—to roll with it rather than trying to fight a losing battle against it.

The torrential rainfall across the southern Plains states on May 25 and 26 led to extensive and devastating flooding and to the tragic loss of at least 19 lives.

R!SE, a new way for the public and private sectors to collaboratively lead on issues of global disaster risk management (DRM), kicked off at three meetings held in different parts of the world.

One of the places I mentioned when I blogged recently about wind engineering facilities that test buildings to destruction was the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) Research Center in South Carolina. Last summer, in conjunction with the American Modern Insurance Group, the center conducted a series of tests to evaluate the effect of high winds on structures attached to manufactured homes.

After two and a half years of development, the first iteration of OpenQuake has just been released. The initiative is led by the Global Earthquake Model (GEM), an independent non-profit headquartered in Pavia, Italy, which works to provide cat model access to communities traditionally priced out of the market.

Before the annual crop of hurricane season forecasts, ace AIR blogger Scott Stransky organizes a fun competition within AIR.

One of the advantages of working at AIR is that I often question colleagues about sensational news headlines, to get the real scoop. When the media starts alarming audiences with polar vortices, hypercanes, thunder snow, and the like I seek out one of my friendly neighborhood subject matter experts who work with these topics every day.

This week greeted Los Angeles residents with a bit of a jolt, as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake struck the area early Monday morning, just a few miles northwest of downtown.

AIR’s blog is live! After months of planning and preparation, I am thrilled to be introducing In Focus to you. We have opened this new channel of communication, not because everyone else seems to be blogging (even though they do), but because we want to initiate a great two-way channel of communication for sharing good stuff with you and building rapport.