The Brief

As the wildfires in Los Angeles tear through hillsides, raze neighborhoods and displace residents, it's too early to know how vast the destruction will be when the last of the flames is put out. Initial estimates predict that the costs will be massive. One leading climate scientist, Daniel Swain of UCLA told KQED that the fires could become some of the costliest in U.S. history; as of Monday afternoon, AccuWeather experts said that total losses could cost somewhere from $250 billion to $275 billion.

Those final, unknown costs and eventual payouts coincide with an inflection point in California's home insurance market, the biggest in the U.S., in the age of climate change. Home insurance rates are increasing across the country, but the Golden State has been hit particularly hard as wildfire seasons have become more devastating, amid hotter temperatures and drought-dried vegetation.
Experts and policymakers agree: Climate change is upending the way that homes are insured in the United States. Across the country, what were once "once-in-a-generation" weather catastrophes occur much more frequently. And as insurance companies contend with the sum total of these disasters, those higher costs are passed on to policyholders.

In many respects, California has a uniquely complicated insurance situation. But it's a problem throughout the country: The effects of climate change are coming for people's home insurance bills.

California faces 'an insurance crisis like we've never seen'

Insurance rates in California have been slowly ticking up for years, though climate change isn't the only driving factor, according to Meredith Fowlie, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Berkeley who researches the links between wildfire risk and insurance prices.

Simply put: The costs of doing business are going up, such as increased costs of the construction materials and skilled labor needed to repair and rebuild homes, as well as higher interest rates, she says. That's the case across the country.

In her research, though, it's clear that the worsening wildfire seasons have been a major driving force behind California's market instability. Specifically, the 2017 and 2018 seasons were "particularly devastating, raising concerns about the insurability of catastrophic wildfire risk," according to a study she co-authored, published last June with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
The massive losses incurred from those fires "wiped out more than a quarter century of cumulative profits for the industry twice over," according to Carolyn Kousky, of the Environmental Defense Fund, who researches climate risk and policy. "So that was a bit of a shake-up for people and a recognition that climate impacts are here and are costly and the risk isn't stabilizing — it's continuing to go up."

A person walks along a fire-ravaged street in the Pacific Palisades on Saturday.

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That coincided with the industry investing more heavily in better analytics and modeling of insurance risk, Fowlie says.

"These newer risk-modeling tools are definitely helping insurers come to terms with what wildfire risk looks like in California and how they'd want to price it in order to ensure that they are ready to pay when claims come in," she says.
The results of all this hit consumers hard, according to the NBER study. Premiums rose, especially in areas where fires had hit or that were otherwise deemed high risk by insurers. Insurers paused writing of new policies or told people their plans wouldn't be renewed; and increasing numbers of people had to resort to California's FAIR Plan, a semiprivate insurance plan of last resort, which has considerably higher premiums and less coverage than traditional plans. (The FAIR Plan covers 1 in 5 homes in the Pacific Palisades, CalMatters reported.)
And since home insurance is a prerequisite for getting and having a mortgage, Fowlie says, it's a particularly pressing issue for those who live in those high-risk ZIP codes, many of whom are struggling to afford the higher insurance rates needed for homeownership.

"California has been suffering from an insurance crisis like we've never seen," California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara says.

Insurance markets across the country are feeling similarly pinched

Shawn Murphy removes drywall at a friend's house after flooding from Hurricane Francine in September 2024.

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California's litany of problems — high premiums, less availability of insurers and increasing numbers of people on insurance plans of last resort — echo across the country, the Environmental Defense Fund's Kousky says. Florida and Louisiana are seeing similar levels of market instability, thanks to worsened hurricane seasons as rising temperatures and sea levels make hurricanes more intense and flooding worse.
Take Florida, where 16 insurer carriers have become insolvent since 2017 and 16 others have stopped writing policies, even though Floridians pay the highest premiums on average in the United States. The state-backed insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance, started getting many more policy holders, NPR reported in 2022.
When Hurricane Ian hit the state in September 2022, many worried that the expensive payouts could be the final straw for many insurance companies. And it was, Central Florida Public Media reported, as Ian proved to be the most expensive storm in Florida history: Over 30 insurance carriers left the state.
Hurricanes and wildfires have been making conditions in Florida, Louisiana and California extreme, but there's a similar trend nationwide, Kousky says. Texas and Colorado had to create state-backed insurance programs because of insurance issues with wildfires, she said, and coastal New Jersey has dealt with rising sea levels that make flooding more likely.

Flames explode as wildfires burn near a shopping center near Broomfield, Colo., on Dec. 30, 2021.

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Across the country, household budgets have been absorbing higher home insurance costs, Fowlie says. Adjusted for inflation, she says, premiums have increased 13% on average since 2020 — though that figure doesn't illustrate how lopsided they have gotten in some parts of the country.

It's something that state insurance commissioners across the country have their eyes on, says Lara, who chairs the climate resiliency committee at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. And he uses what has happened in California's market as an example of what could happen to others.

"What we've been telling people nationally and in our meetings with other insurance commissioners is do not wait until California comes to a theater near you and you're getting insurance companies to either restrict their portfolios in the state or leaving the state," he says.

Firefighters from an Oregon strike team survey damage Sunday at a Sunset Boulevard home leveled by the Palisades Fire.

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The L.A. fires come as insurers are poised to come back to California

In the near future, insurance rates in California are expected to spike — but not necessarily because of the fires. At the end of 2024, the California Department of Insurance passed long-anticipated regulations in an attempt to increase access to insurance.

There are many parts to the new regulations, but chief among them is something that insurance companies had asked from state regulators for years: being able to base rates on forward-looking models of climate risk in the state, without needing to cite historical data. In exchange, the companies committed to writing more policies in high-wildfire-risk areas and factoring in any fire-mitigation efforts into lowering those rates.
"Those were concessions to the insurance industry to create an environment that they feel more comfortable doing business in," says Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit group that advocates for people with insurance policies.\

Like other experts, she expects this to increase rates in the short term as insurers adjust their prices. But it's unclear whether this latest batch of wildfires will upend these efforts to stabilize the market, she says.
Lara, though, is optimistic that the market will improve within a year but acknowledges that "this fire complicates an already complicated situation."

It's a test case of whether policy reform can meet climate challenges

These rules don't just have implications for California — Lara hopes that these new reforms can be a road map for other states that are trying to adjust for climate change's effects on homeownership. "If we're going to have a solvent insurance market in the country, insurance can no longer be an afterthought in the national and global conversations around climate change. Insurance has to be at the forefront."

But if the past few years have demonstrated anything, it's that traditional insurance models have had trouble accounting for the "known unknown" risks that climate change poses, the Environmental Defense Fund's Kousky says, making it difficult to provide coverage affordably.
"I think the big question now, after what we're seeing in the L.A. region, is, you know, how far can regulatory changes go in helping maintain insurability in this environment of really catastrophic wildfire risk?" she says.

What has become clear, though, is that it's a problem that U.S. homeowners are not going to be able to ignore.
"It's the one place where I feel lots of Americans are seeing the costs of climate hit their pocketbooks," she says. "And it's like a kitchen table economics problem now. And yet it's directly related to what we've been doing with the climate. And I think it's maybe one of the first places that lots of people are grappling with that."

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William Contreras hit a tying homer in the fifth and singled home the go-ahead run an inning later as the Milwaukee Brewers defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-4 on Monday in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.

Four relievers combined to retire the last 15 Dodgers batters in order as the Brewers took a 2-0 lead over the two-time defending World Series champions in this best-of-seven series, which heads to Los Angeles for Game 3 on Wednesday.

The Brewers are chasing their second pennant and first in the NL. They made their lone World Series appearance in 1982, when they were in the American League.

Los Angeles is trying to become the first NL team to win three straight World Series. The Dodgers last rallied from a 2-0 deficit to win a series in 2020, when they beat the Atlanta Braves in a seven-game NLCS before going on to win the World Series.

The Dodgers will need more punch from their lineup to have a chance at getting back to the Fall Classic. They mustered just three hits Monday and went 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position to drop to 2 for 26 in those situations this postseason.

Los Angeles couldn’t even get a boost from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who entered 8-1 with a 2.14 ERA in 11 career playoff appearances. Yamamoto lasted just 2 2/3 innings for his shortest postseason start.

The Dodgers took the lead on three occasions in the first five innings. Milwaukee responded each time, the last coming when Contreras tied the game with a 436-foot homer to center off Kris Bubic in the fifth.

That turned the game into a battle of the bullpens, where the Brewers again had the edge.

Dustin May, JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe and Aaron Ashby combined to shut down the Dodgers after Logan Henderson’s early exit.

The score was tied 4-all when Milwaukee’s David Hamilton was hit by a pitch from Brock Stewart to lead off the sixth. Stewart attempted a pickoff throw that went off the glove of first baseman Freddie Freeman and into foul territory for an error, advancing Hamilton to second.

After Jackson Chourio grounded out, the right-handed Stewart walked the left-handed-hitting Brice Turang to face the right-handed Contreras, who had homered in his previous plate appearance.

Contreras singled to left this time to bring home Hamilton with the go-ahead run.

Turang and Jake Bauers added RBI singles in the eighth to extend Milwaukee’s lead.

Neither starter lasts long

The anticipated pitchers’ duel between Yamamoto and Henderson didn’t work out according to plan.

In three previous playoff starts following Dodgers losses, Yamamoto had gone 3-0 with a 1.23 ERA. When he faced the Brewers in last year’s NLCS, he threw the first playoff complete game since Justin Verlander did it in 2017.

This time, Yamamoto couldn’t even make it out of the third inning before leaving with the Dodgers behind 3-2.

Henderson entered Monday having not allowed more than three runs in any of his 24 career starts (including the postseason). That streak ended when he allowed four runs over four innings.

Because Henderson committed two errors — matching his previous career total — only two of the runs were earned.

Milwaukee trailed 2-1 in the third when Bauers capped a 12-pitch plate appearance by taking a 3-2 offering in the dirt to load the bases with a walk. Christian Yelich followed by lining a single up the middle that brought home two runs and knocked Yamamoto out of the game.

Los Angeles bailed out Yamamoto by scoring twice in the fifth.

After Kyle Tucker hit a leadoff double, Tommy Edman sacrificed him to third. Henderson fielded the bunt and made a wild throw to first, enabling Tucker to score and moving Edman to second.

Edman advanced to third when Mookie Betts grounded out, and scored on Freeman’s sacrifice fly.

Henderson also had made a wild throw to first on a pickoff attempt in the third inning that allowed Edman to score from third.

Up next

Robert Gasser (5-5, 3.87 ERA) is expected to start for Milwaukee in Game 3. Gasser allowed one run over five innings when the Brewers won 3-1 at San Diego to clinch their NL Division Series.

The Dodgers hadn’t announced their Game 3 starting pitcher.

Actor and disability rights advocate RJ Mitte, who brought a lifetime of experience with cerebral palsy to fictional family struggles in an essential role on “Breaking Bad,” died Monday at age 34, authorities and his representatives said.

Cameron County Justice of the Peace Cyndi Hinojosa told The Associated Press she declared Mitte dead at about 1:30 p.m. at what she believed was his home in Brownsville, Texas. She said she was unable to provide a cause, but an autopsy will be performed.

Mitte played Walter White Jr., the son of Bryan Cranston’s chemistry teacher-turned-meth dealer Walter White on nearly every episode of the five seasons of the AMC show, which recently ranked as the best of the 21st century in a New York Times poll.

Diagnosed at age 3, Mitte told the AP in 2014 that his disability and the surrounding struggles with physical therapy, family problems and exorbitant medical bills — all key subjects on the show — made him better at his job.“You develop a different mentality and you develop a different look at how the world sees you and how you see the world,” he said. “You’re able to use that. And I think it’s an asset instead of something that would hinder.”

Mitte was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi.

He landed small guest roles on sitcoms after moving to Los Angeles to act in 2006. Like his character, he was in his mid-teens when he began his work on “Breaking Bad,” starting in 2007. The show ran from 2008 to 2013.

“Mitte brought authenticity to the role and built a platform on disability awareness and inclusion,” the actor’s representatives said in a statement announcing his death. The statement said he used “his platform to challenge stereotypes and promote greater representation.”

His later credits included the ABC Family series “Switched at Birth” and the superhero satire series “Guardians of Justice.”

He was also a producer of several independent films.

As an advocate, he served as an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children’s. He was also president of his own Mitte Foundation supporting philanthropic and community initiatives around disabilities.

The drumbeat of monster hurricanes in the Pacific has broken a record for nasty long-lasting storms east of the international date line, turbocharged by nature’s supersized El Niño, scientists said.

“Since September 20th, when Odalys formed, it’s been berserk,” said Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach, who forecasts and studies storm activity. “This year just everything that forms is just lasting a long time and getting really powerful.”

One of the key measurements meteorologists use to judge hurricane seasons is called accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE, which includes a storm’s wind speed and longevity. On Sunday, a section of the Pacific east of the date line, which brews storms headed for Hawaii, Mexico and the U.S. West Coast, passed the old mark set in 2018. The area is still going strong with Hurricane Simon and appears on the verge of spawning another one that will really ramp up in strength, Klotzbach said.

On Tuesday, the Pacific will tie a record for most days with a hurricane spinning and is likely to break it soon after that, Klotzbach said.

“It feels like almost everything that can spin up does spin up,” said University of Arizona atmospheric scientist Kim Wood.

El Niño and warm water are boosting Pacific hurricanes

Several meteorological factors have come together to supercharge the Pacific, chief among them the El Niño, Klotzbach and other hurricane researchers said. An El Niño weakens and shifts the high altitude vertical winds that otherwise can dampen or even decapitate storms. In the Pacific, that wind shear runs east to west, generally with the direction storms travel, so it’s like riding a bicycle with a tail wind, Klotzbach said.

Meanwhile, the weather pattern has dampened hurricanes in the Atlantic, where the ACE is less than 18% of what’s normal for this time of year. El Niño makes the wind shear in the Atlantic like riding into a headwind, he said.

Another factor is warm water, which serves as hurricane fuel. By definition El Niño is a warming of the equatorial Pacific that changes weather worldwide. In the Pacific storm basin, it’s several degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, said Kristen Corbosiero, a professor of storm atmospheric sciences at the University at Albany in New York.

Usually in the Pacific, the extra warm storm-friendly water doesn’t run as deep as it does in the Atlantic. So when one storm goes over a patch of water, it brings up cold water and makes it hard for a subsequent storm in the same area to stay alive, Wood said. But not this year.

Hurricane Rachel, whose remnants swamped Las Vegas over the weekend, didn’t suffer as it went over, churned up by Category 5 Hurricane Polo, Wood said. She said the waters are warm from both El Niño and climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Another factor in recent storms was a counterclockwise atmosphere spin over Central America — called a gyre — that spits out seeds of stormy weather that can form into hurricanes. It spit out both the Atlantic’s Isaias and the Pacific’s Simon at about the same time, Corbosiero and Klotzbach said.

Five major hurricanes in a row

The last five Pacific hurricanes — long-lasting Nolo, Odalys, Polo, Rachel and Simon — have all reached major status with winds of at least 111 mph (178.6 kph). Nolo, Odalys and Simon hit Category 4, while Polo set the record for time spent at Category 5 at two-and-a-half days.

When Klotzbach made those calculations on the record-breaking activity of the eastern and central Pacific, he looked at all storms east of the date line.

That’s a slightly different approach from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which breaks that broad area into two regions. Neither NOAA-defined region is quite at record levels for ACE yet; put together they are.

Part of that is because often when one of those subregions is more active, the other isn’t quite as crazy, but in 2026 they both are hyperactive, Wood said.≠

“This is the first year that both sides have been this active together,” Wood said. “Usually it’s kind of focused more on one or the other, so that speaks to just the wide extent across this region of where there’s been that lower shear, those warmer waters, and that higher moisture.”

Off the Mexican coast is a disturbance that the National Hurricane Center gives a 90% chance of becoming Tropical Storm Trudy, which then could power up to something big, Klotzbach and Corbosiero said.

“It seems like that area is just one after another. So I would not be surprised to have another storm,” Corbosiero said. “This year, because of the El Niño, we do have very favorable conditions. So as long as there’s some sort of the seeds either from the gyre or from remnant ends of cold fronts, it seems like this is going to continue for a bit.”

California students enrolled in public colleges and universities are now eligible to apply for CalFresh, the state’s food benefits program, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday.

Students enrolled in a degree program at a California Community College, California State University or the University of California may be eligible for up to $300 a month to spend on food at grocery stores and farmers markets.

“We can’t expect students to learn if they’re hungry, and in California, there is no reason for them to be, whether they’re in kindergarten, high school, or college,” Newsom said in a Friday statement. “You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get the food benefits you’re entitled to, and now you don’t have to.”

Those who are enrolled in an associate or bachelor’s degree program, at least half time, can apply here. Newsom said that the state expects more than 200,000 additional students to enroll in CalFresh after program expansion.

“This is what government is supposed to do: help the people we serve. It is my hope that these changes will continue to make it easier for students to access CalFresh, the largest anti-hunger program in the country,” California Department of Social Services Director Jennifer Troia said in a Friday statement.