The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season has been quiet so far, but historically, it's a big week for big storms. Hurricane Andrew, one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history, made landfall in Florida 30 years ago this week. A Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds hitting 165 mph, Andrew caused roughly $26 billion in damage, destroyed more than 50,000 homes and changed the way the nation thinks about hurricanes. Cities in South Florida promptly updated their building codes and began enforcing them more robustly. The state now has some of the strongest codes in the country. Hurricane forecasting has also improved dramatically , which can help people get out of harm's way before a storm. The National Hurricane Center says tracking accuracy has increased 75 percent, while intensity forecasts have improved 50 percent. 'Woefully unprepared' Since the 1980s, however, hurricanes have only gotten longer, more frequent and more intense. Scientists expect climate change, caused by emissions from burning fossil fuels, to make big storms more extreme and to bring on higher storm surge because of sea-level rise. Andrew was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history until Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, also in late August, in 2005. Andrew's record has since been surpassed five more times by Irma, Ida, Sandy, Maria and Harvey. Many disaster managers and experts believe the nation is not ready for what's coming. Most jurisdictions around the country do not have adequate building codes, and taxpayers often foot the bill for rebuilding the most flood-prone properties via the beleaguered National Flood Insurance Program. "These disasters will get worse, and their impact farther reaching, yet most Americans remain woefully unprepared," Craig Fugate, a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, wrote in an op-ed with former FEMA official Roy Wright this week. Climate science One thing that has advanced is climate science. Researchers can now pinpoint how climate change affects individual storms. Studies showed that Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall five years ago this week, was worsened by climate change as it dumped record rainfall on the Houston area. A study published this week found that 30 to 50 percent of the properties that flooded during Harvey would not have been inundated without climate change. As for the 2022 season, which runs through Nov. 30, the National Weather Service is still expecting an above-average year, despite a slow start. Andrew, after all, was the first named storm of the season when it barreled ashore in 1992.
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