Kyle Davis studies the spot where weather collides with money. A senior manager of catastrophe risk at American Family Insurance, he watches weather trends and measures how catastrophes affect property and the people who own it.

He holds a master’s degree in atmospheric science and a bachelor’s degree in actuarial science, a pairing that fits the work. On the side, he runs a hurricane model with the University of Arizona that predicts how many storms a season is likely to bring.

“I’m passionate about weather,” Davis said in a recent interview for the ISSA Sustainability Committee. That passion lands on a subject every facility decision-maker has a stake in: the weather is getting harder to predict, and the buildings in its path keep getting more expensive.

The El Nino everyone keeps mentioning

For all the headlines about a historic El Nino, Davis said, most people stay confused about what it actually is. He starts with the Pacific. Trade winds normally blow from east to west along the equator, pushing warm surface water toward Asia until it gathers near Indonesia in what scientists call the Western Pacific warm pool. That warm water feeds heavy thunderstorms.

In an El Nino year, the pattern loosens. “Those trade winds slacken off, so they’re not blowing as hard,” Davis said. The warm water sloshes back toward South America, and the storms travel with it. Because the affected area is so large, the shift reaches all the way up to the jet stream, the high-altitude current that steers weather across the globe.

Most El Nino effects show up in winter, Davis said, bringing a wetter, cooler Sunbelt and a milder, warmer stretch across the northern tier of states. Worldwide, the influence reaches places such as southern Africa and Japan. Hurricane season is the big exception. A strong El Nino tends to have what he called “kind of a squashing effect” on storms, stabilizing the atmosphere and adding wind shear that makes the environment hostile for hurricanes to form. None of it is guaranteed. “There’s usually a correlation,” he said, but an El Nino year is not a promise.

Why losses keep climbing

Look at economic and insured losses over the past few decades and the line climbs steadily. The biggest driver, Davis said, is not what most people assume: it is changing exposure, meaning more people and bigger houses spreading into the path of the same storms. He calls it the expanding bullseye effect.

“Maybe 10 years ago, a tornado dropped down in what was a field,” Davis said. “But maybe now that’s the subdivision, so suddenly it’s much more expensive.” Even after adjusting for inflation, the damage totals keep rising.

The second driver is volatility. Averages, he warned, can hide the real story. A year can finish near normal for total rainfall and still wreck a region. “What you might see in that is 360 days of drought and five days of flooding,” Davis said.

Wildfire lost its calendar

Wildfire used to come with a season. Not anymore. Davis pointed to the destructive California fires that burned in January and to the Marshall Fire that tore through communities near Denver on December 30, 2021, driven by 100-mile-an-hour winds at a time of year when snow usually covers the ground.

The broad trend toward hotter, drier conditions feeds fires, but the relationship is messier than it sounds. An area can get so hot and dry that little is left to burn. A wet stretch can be just as dangerous, because the new growth dries out later and turns into fuel. Layer in the habit of building homes and commercial structures deep into wooded areas, and the exposure climbs.

His advice on landscaping is blunt. “Putting wood chips next to your house, it’s like putting a bunch of matches next to your house,” Davis said. “So, it’s not going to help you.”

Hurricanes that sit and soak

Slow-moving hurricanes worry Davis most. A storm that stalls over one area keeps dropping water and battering structures with wind. His example is Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which parked over the Houston region and stayed. “Sat and sat and sat,” he said, releasing an almost unbelievable volume of water.

He also sees a higher share of intense storms. Last year produced five hurricanes, and four of them were major, far above the roughly 20% that would be typical. Warm ocean water can let a storm explode in strength almost overnight. Whether the total number of hurricanes is rising is a separate question. That count ebbs and flows with sea surface temperatures, and Davis is cautious about calling it a long-term trend.

Smaller storms, bigger surprises

The map for severe weather is shifting too. Extended dryness reaching from Colorado into Kansas is making tornadoes less common across the traditional Great Plains, while the Mid-South, sometimes called Dixie Alley, is seeing more of them, and more on a given day. Hail is following the volatility theme, with the possibility of fewer total events but more instances of large hail. Flooding is becoming more frequent.

Davis also flags a quieter risk for commercial owners: lost asset value. A building beside a lake can lose worth fast if that lake dries up and exposes contaminated ground underneath.

What owners can actually do

Most of the rising loss, Davis said, traces back to where people choose to build. He urges owners to study the hazards of a site before committing to it and to plan for events they have never personally witnessed. A river that has crept up a foot in 10 years can still rise 20 feet in a one-in-100-year flood.

He cited the Camp Mystic flooding in Texas last year as a painful example of what happens without a plan. People died in an area long known to be prone to flooding, Davis said, and warnings went unheeded in the middle of the night. The lesson is preparation, not hindsight.

There are concrete steps. Invest in hail-resistant roofing. Keep flammable material away from structures in wildfire country. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety offers resources that help owners assess a property and make it more resilient. And carry insurance before you need it. “The time to buy insurance is not when a disaster is happening,” Davis said, “because that’s not how insurance works.” Once a fire is moving toward a building, coverage is usually off the table.

His closing thought is plain: Know the risks your location carries and have a plan for them. He remembers staying at an Iowa hotel as severe weather moved in. The staff told guests where to shelter and what alarm to listen for, so the place felt ready. The trouble starts, Davis said, when people are oblivious to what is coming.

Be weather aware, he said, and take warnings seriously.