FEMA’s Disaster Map Is Getting Crowded

FEMA’s Disaster Map Is Getting Crowded - The New York Times

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Just How Wild Was This Week’s Weather? One Image Tells the Tale.

Each weekday morning, FEMA releases a map showing weather hazards around the country. It’s starting to get a little out of hand.

No single image could fully capture the confluence of extreme weather events that is disrupting the United States this week, buffeting the country from coast to coast with snowstorms, intense flooding, high winds and even tornadoes.

But one map comes close.

Each weekday morning at precisely 8:30, the Federal Emergency Management Agency releases what it calls its “hazards outlook” map, designed to show the threats expected in the coming days. The goal is to help emergency managers and other officials around the country prepare for what’s headed their way.

Lately, those maps have come to resemble abstract art, or just crayoning gone wild. On Monday, FEMA’s hazard map showed areas of heavy rain, freezing rain, heavy snow, heavy precipitation, hazardous cold, high winds and general severe weather. Seemingly just four of the 50 states were not facing some type of worrisome hazard.

By Thursday, the picture had somehow become even worse. In addition to heavy snow, heavy rain and high winds, a flood risk extended from the border between Maine and New Hampshire, all the way to Alabama.

It wasn’t always like this. During the second week of January a decade ago, for example, FEMA’s hazard maps were simple by comparison: High winds in the upper plains, heavy rain around the Florida panhandle, small pockets of flooding, drought in parts of the West. It was smooth sailing in whole swaths of the country — devoid of problems, at least from an emergency management perspective.

That pattern — localized concerns in parts of the country, with much of the map showing no hazards — was much the same during this week five years ago.

Of course, severe winter storms are nothing new, and no single weather event can automatically be attributed to climate change. But as the planet warms, the atmosphere can hold more water, which makes severe weather more likely.

Jeremy Greenberg, director of the operations division in FEMA’s Response Directorate, has noticed the hazard map grow busier.

“The duration, frequency and intensity of the hazards is increasing over time,” Mr. Greenberg said. “It’s becoming a little more commonplace that this map looks like this, and we’ve got a variety of hazards.”

Disasters in the United States used to follow a fairly predictable pattern, Mr. Greenberg said. Winter brought snow; spring brought floods and the summer and early fall delivered hurricanes, with hopefully some downtime before the cycle would start again.

Now, those seasonal shifts are becoming less meaningful. “A snowstorm in the Rockies in the winter is very normal,” he said. “A tornado in Alabama in the winter is not.”

Brock Long, who served as FEMA’s administrator during the Trump administration, said the growing number of disasters is straining not only the agency, but emergency managers at all levels of government.

FEMA’s daily hazard outlook map has become a sort of illustrated guide to catastrophe, a multicolored heads-up of the calamity to come.

Mr. Greenberg sees a silver lining in the relentless parade of severe weather: it can grab the attention of Americans, helping them understand that the world is changing around them and they need to be ready.

“The hazards are real,” Mr. Greenberg said.

Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter who writes about how the United States is trying to adapt to the effects of climate change. More about Christopher Flavelle

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