IN YOUR BACKYARD: Extreme Weather is Only Getting WORSE

0:00This is Brett Mycelos with the Midas Touch podcast, and welcome to episode two of In Your Backyard. In case this is your first time catching the show, this is the latest show on the Midas Touch network, and every two weeks, so every other Thursday, we're going to be unpacking how public policy and political failings are playing out in communities across the country as it relates to climate issues, and you know that these issues are near and dear to my heart. Midas Touch host Luke Radel chats with experts, candidates, elected officials, and the real people who are experiencing the very real consequences and fighting back.

0:31In episode one, which you could find on the Midas Touch podcast feed and on our sub stack at midasplus.com, we took a deep dive into data centers. On this episode, Luke will be chatting about extreme weather. It's a scientific fact that our weather is getting more extreme. Storms are getting stronger. Temperature swings are wilder. This summer set records as the hottest in the history of the United States. But behind the statistics and scientific patterns, are human stories about people whose lives have already been upended by extreme weather events and the turmoil that follows. Luke talked with a resident of Gary, Indiana, who lost power for half a month this summer.

1:06Then he connected with a man who lost his home and his sister in last year's devastating wildfires in Southern California. How do we recover, rebuild, or prepare? What are people across the country and the world up against? And most importantly, what can we do about it. Luke sought answers from a meteorologist in South Florida who's been warning us about climate-fueled extreme weather for years. We want to know what you think, how have your communities been weathering the summer of extremes, and let us know what you're seeing in your backyard that you'd like covered in upcoming episodes. Without further ado, here's episode two of In Your Backyard with Luke Radel.

1:41Hey everybody, welcome back to episode two of In Your Backyard. I'm your host, Luke Radle. And is it just me or does it feel like we're experiencing a lot more extreme weather events? From my background in local news, I felt like we'd often be talking more each and every week, each and every year about these thousand year, 500 year floods. Things are getting worse out there. The science has shown us that. And we've seen the headlines just over the past few months, the flash floods ripping through the Grand Canyon and a derecha storm that knocked out power in Gary, Indiana for weeks. I know we've seen a lot of comments from you about that story, and that's why we're going to focus on it today.

2:28We're going to focus on the extreme weather that we've been experiencing. Across the country, we have set records for the hottest summer in the history of the United States. and communities across America are bracing for what kind of weather the El Nino could bring in the next few months. And then on top of all of that, on top of the scientific realities we have to deal with, there are also the political realities. We are living in a post-doge era where cuts have been made to programs that were once considered apolitical and essential. A a hurricane, a tornado, an extreme weather event, doesn't care whether you voted for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the last election.

3:10And yet, all of those communities, whether you voted for the president or not, are being impacted by the cuts that we've seen to the National Weather Service and to FEMA. People who need aid after disasters aren't getting what they would have normally gotten in the aftermath. And it has many meteorologists flying blind in terms of providing warnings and delivering relief to folks in dire need. So today we're going to hear from those who've already experienced in their communities what that has meant for them, what living under this second Trump term in this post-Doge world has meant. And we're also going to hear from an expert meteorologist about why the weather seems to have been going so crazy and why it's even harder than usual, thanks to the president and his administration to predict what's going to happen next.

4:00This is in your backyard. As I mentioned before, we have received a lot of feedback from you asking us to talk about what's been happening in Gary, Indiana. There has been a lack of news coverage and attention by the national media and by our federal government on what's happening there. And it speaks to so many of the divides and issues that we've been dealing with in this country for decades. Its power was finally restored to that community just last month. But the freakish storm that ripped through Indiana and parts of Illinois revealed a lot about how fast extreme weather can get out of control and create nightmare scenarios for people in its path.

4:43And also the unfortunate but all too real disparities and how different communities are able to recover. I talked with Aja Bridges, who lives in Gary, Indiana, and scrambled not just to keep her family safe during the blackout, but also to keep them fed. Here's some of my conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today on In Your Backyard. I was hoping that you could share with folks watching where you're from and what you've been going through over the past month now. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Aja. I am here in Gary, Indiana. The past month, to say the least, has been somewhat catastrophic.

5:30Around August 11, we were hit with a massive tornado that essentially knocked out all of our electricity. And the issues surrounding infrastructure and NIPSCO and everything else has just been a handful and we have literally just been maintaining and getting by. I know a big issue is groceries, support. Getting access to electricity was number one and we were in the dark for two weeks. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Talk a little bit about the needs that you guys still have now on the ground. There's been a lot of reporting about a shortage of food in Gary. Is that something that you've been experiencing?

6:18As a resident, yes. I know that we live in a food desert, meaning we don't have any major grocery stores. We don't have a Walmart. We don't have a we don't have any of that. We just have one local grocery store and you know it's not the best. It's not great. I do know that issues surrounding food is one of the biggest problems right now, especially because our outages haven't stopped, right? At any moment's notice, our lights will go right back out and they'll be out for a day or two days. So I know keeping food in the refrigerator has been extremely hard. And, you know, it's traumatic to say the least to not know when you're going to have to turn around and throw groceries you just purchased away.

7:00And we're trying our best to stay positive and to keep groceries and food on the table. Yeah. And in terms of keeping everybody in your house fed, you have two children. How has that been working for you guys as a family, making sure that folks are getting enough food to eat? I know that I have a specific circumstance because my daughter, she's a picky eater. She's autistic, so she has to have her normal foods, her safe foods. It's just been extremely difficult to get her back on track. and I know during the blackout you know we've depended a lot on fast food which is not you know my priority or my children's you know they're used to a home-cooked meal so trying to get back into routine and I know we've had enough to eat but we have to travel pretty far to get good produce you know nutritious food and things that aren't accessible here in Gary yeah my brother is a person with Down syndrome.

8:04And so I know all too well what that is like. He is strictly chicken fingers and French fries all the time. And so I know how difficult it can be sometimes to make that work, especially in a situation like this. Talk a little bit about the disparity in the community between who got power turned on first, who seems to be getting more of the attention. What have you been seeing on the ground there in Gary in this response effort? So my hometown where I was raised is Valparaiso, Indiana. It is predominantly Caucasian. They're just 45 minutes down the road, but I've lived in Gary for over 15 years and the surrounding communities that have a higher median household income, you know, we're 33 % below the poverty line.

8:57We watched NIPSCO prioritize other cities and, you know, places like where I was raised, they weren't without power for more than a day. And then you look 45 minutes where we're at and it took us two weeks. We were not prioritized. NIPSCO released multiple updates on the outages. Gary was not on the list. It took for us to make a lot of noise to even hear, you know, maybe this day, maybe that day. But there were a lot of stipulations and rumors surrounding things that never happened that stopped progress. And we were pretty much left behind by NIBSCO for a long time. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about your home as well, which I understand sustained some damage in the storm.

9:40Tell folks what you're experiencing on a day-to-day basis as a result of that damage. So I know, I don't know if you're aware, but it was like, it's called a drencho. so there was a lot a lot of water um and i know my roof took on a lot of wind a couple of trees and a lot of water so i have carpet so our carpet is completely ruined my mattress was ruined because the roof right above completely like there's holes in it and there's holes in the closet there's holes everywhere in my room so a lot of our furniture a lot of our clothes a lot of our like beds and things, we can't use them. And we had to wait on FEMA to send people out to come and inspect every house one by one before they were able to give us anything towards anything.

10:28And it's at their discretion. It's what they feel like you should get. So I know along with myself, a lot of people have a lot of furniture on the curb. I know I throw a lot of stuff away. Just trying to get back to normalcy and rebuilding what we had, but we're also still dealing with the reality of things like you mentioned, groceries and our children going back to school, things like that. Yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. And this extreme weather is impacting folks across the country, whether you're in the Midwest or the Southeast that so often gets hit by hurricanes or out west, where we saw the devastation of the California wildfires most acutely and extremely in 2025.

11:15January, fires destroyed entire communities across Los Angeles. And I connected with Zaire Calvin, who lost his home and his mother's home in Altadena, about the things that he and his family are never going to get back as a result of extreme weather and why the recovery process remains so difficult for people who are fighting with the insurance companies and the federal government more than a year and a half later. Here is my emotional conversation with Zaire. Sir, thank you so much for joining me on In Your Backyard. I really appreciate you taking the time. Yes, glad to be here. So talk to me a little bit about your experience out in California in the Eaton Fire.

11:58We saw so much devastation happen in Altadena and Pasadena and so many other places in and around Los Angeles. And I understand that your home was among those claimed in the fires. I'm so sorry to hear that. Could you tell us a little more about your experience over a year ago now? Yes. My experience, we lost five homes on two properties. My sister actually died in the fire. She was one of the first victims of the fire. We actually literally found her. So that's how I know we were the first case that happened when it comes to all the tragedy and how much that we've lost. Our community is devastated.

12:48We never thought our community was gonna burn down. Our fire was so unexpected because the fire actually never came down off the hill. It never came off the mountain. We actually got burned down by the winds and embers that were the size of golf balls, tennis balls. You know, extreme weather is what caused it with all of the winds and the fires. I want to pause for a moment before we keep talking about the extreme weather. And could you share with me a little bit about your sister and tell me about who she was? Yeah, she was a bus driver. She wanted to be a simple woman. She was a college graduate, graduated from Loyola Marymount, went right into corporate America.

13:48Corporate America was hard on her. So she was like, I just want more of a basic life. So she became a bus driver and wanted to just be there for kids and be part of community that way. and she was a God-fearing person. She definitely, you know, Jesus was everything to her. So her whole life was about following rules, doing the right thing. The biggest thing she ever did bad in life, she would say, was running a stop sign and she's still arguing with that. I could see her from her grave arguing with that sheriff to this day. gave her a ticket for running the stop sign because she believed in following the rules.

14:38That was probably the worst offense she's had in life. And she was just a loving person who wanted, you know, who'd been through a lot in life and wanted a quiet life at this point in life because she went through a lot. Yeah. Thank you for sharing about her. I understand it was your home and your mother's home that were lost in the fires in addition to to many more. What has it been like working with the insurance companies in the aftermath of this devastation? Working with the insurance companies has been hell on earth, as we can just to put it blatantly. We've been fighting as a community and have been leading the charge against all of the ill practices of insurance companies, all the deny, delay get you to repeat our whole community is underinsured I'm talking about even down to our water companies so these aren't even just the individuals we're talking about the whole community is underinsured when it comes to insurance and the predatory practices that have happened when it comes to payouts and trying to make sure that our community is stabilized it's been absolutely horrendous because our fight, you lost everything.

16:02Then you're fighting against the people who you paid your whole life for. They've dropped policies. They're not honoring policies. It's just been such a tremendous fight. Like you said, it's been a year and a half. For us, it feels like it just happened. We're still fighting that hard. Could you offer some of the specific names of these insurance companies just because I want to reach out to them as a reporter and try and press as much as we can to put a spotlight on what they're doing here? Yeah, one of the biggest ones, the biggest contributor has been State Farm. State Farm has been the biggest bad actor in this whole ordeal.

16:47I've been leading the fight with all of my whole community. And farmers just got sued also. So the county just followed suit with lawsuits to do investigative reports into State Farm, farmers, Allstate. It's been a lot of insurance, but State Farm has been the leading entity in the bad when it comes to victimizing the community. And then also the California Fair plan has been absolutely horrendous. So what they've offered people, which is pennies on the dollars, that has been a huge problem for our community also. It's so interesting to hear you say that because I know this is a time of year when many people are sitting down to watch football on Sundays.

17:45And I feel like you oftentimes can't go a commercial break without seeing a commercial from one of those names of those companies that you just mentioned. One of them has the slogan, you're in good hands. I wonder if you felt that you've been in good hands as a result of what you've experienced. It's so ironic that you say that because I coach and I have kids that actually play because I'm a coach also. They call me Coach Z. I have kids that actually are in the NFL and in these different arenas and play. So when they say, are you in good hands, it's the total opposite. And watching the commercials are triggering to a community now, which is very hurtful.

18:27There are individual claims that have been okay. I always like to state that. People have had some amazing old policies that paid out, but we have not been in good hands as a community. It has been very hurtful, stressful, and it has stagnated our recovery. Talk to me a little bit about the makeup of the community in Altadena. I believe at one point you had described some of these folks as pen and paper people, which I know in an increasingly digital world makes all the processes of filling out forms that much harder. Talk a little bit about what you guys are experiencing in the community. Yeah, we have 50 to 60 % of the home ownership were our elders, and our elders are pen and paper people.

19:16So when it came to being discriminated against and them finding resources and being able to navigate the systems, it's been absolutely horrendous for them. It's been such a trying time. And then the ones who have kind of gotten through is because they have kids that are taking care of them. We're trying to walk them through the processes. and they're still having problems. So you're talking about, and these aren't people who don't have understanding. To give you an idea of where we are, we're in Pasadena. You're talking about JPL, NASA. You're talking about Caltech. You're talking about people that are capable and still having problems navigating the systems because the systems are so bad.

20:08Some of my earliest memories as a child were watching Mr. Rogers and what he has said that stuck with me throughout is whenever something is bad, whenever there's trouble, you look for the helpers. And we've spent a lot of time talking about the folks that have made things a lot harder for you and for your neighbors. But who have been the helpers in all of this? Who have been the people there helping to put the community back together? I would say the first helpers, I always give God the glory. But after that, I would say the community. People have helped each other in this process of getting your neighbor helping, even in evacuation.

20:51It was neighbors that were coming to each other's rescues. It was neighbors that were saving. I have a friend that, you know, it was a Black neighbor and it was a white neighbor whose feet were on fire, literally. And he picked him up and literally carried him and put him in his car and drove him to safety. So when we talk about community and who the people who were the first responders to everything was the community was first. Then I would say after that, philanthropy has been a great support. So philanthropy has actually carried us to where we are now to be able to even be in the position that we are to even start to build back.

21:36philanthropy, philanthropic organizations have actually given. And the people around the nation who've given have really been the first ones, again, who helped and were able to help our recovery. And then I've been on the front line fighting every part. So to get the county and And our senators, Senators Sacha Perez has been amazing. She's been frontline with us. But to organize all of them from Harabedian to Perez to our county supervisor to get where we are today has been a collective fight as a community. Yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much again for sharing your story and for all the work that you're doing there on the ground.

22:28We really appreciate it. Yes, thank you for having me. And as scary and sad as these personal stories are, there's also a broader trend that we need to look at. It's tough to say this out loud, but these types of stories are going to be happening more often in your community to people that you know and care about, even to you. And that's what I talked about with John Morales. He's a meteorologist who has served communities in South Florida for decades. And he talked with me about the science behind extreme weather events and what has been worrying him about what's to come. Take a listen to my conversation with John Morales.

23:08John, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today on In Your Backyard. No, happy to be here. So I want you to give folks a sense of your background and how you got involved in the work that you're doing now. Yeah, listen, I've been a meteorologist for 42 years. Greatly as an operational meteorologist, we're the people that write the forecast, but also warn for impending and life-threatening weather, right? And whether it was with the National Weather Service or as a broadcast meteorologist, I served in that fashion for a vast majority of those 42 years. recently I do some other things more in the realm of climate communications but that is because if you go back 25 years or so within my broadcast meteorology career I am proud to say that I was a pioneer in that area broadcast meteorologists you know weather casters were not providing climate context in their weather segments and I made every effort to do so and it was an upstream battle.

24:17Still wage it today in an era in which there seems to be more climate hushing than ever, but still out there trying to make people aware of what's going on and what's coming. Yeah. Before I had this job, I was a local news reporter in my hometown of Utica, New York. And some of my favorite people at the station were the meteorologists because I just respect so much the work that you guys do. I know that I can never do it, mainly because I'm really bad at math and science, but I really respect the work that you do so much. And I've seen with the meteorologists that I've worked with in the past and in the work that I've seen just out of clips from you in South Florida, how much you really care about the community that you serve.

25:01Talk a little bit about the role, the service that you perform for the people in South Florida and now kind of across the country with the work that you're doing on climate. Yeah, no, listen, you know, as a South Florida weathercaster since 1991, and especially in the late 90s and the early part of this new century, as extreme weather events started to become more severe and multiply, And with the added threat of Florida being in the crosshairs of many of the symptoms of the changing climate, I just took it upon me to make sure that the audience realized how important it was to, well, clamor for action on climate so that we could try to slow this down or somehow reverse it.

25:52In other words, think of the threats, right? Sea level rise, extreme humid heat that's impacting everybody down there. Stronger hurricanes as well being driven by climate change. When it rains, it rains harder because the air mass can sustain more moisture in it. And we're seeing rain induced floods in Miami and other South Florida communities much more often. So these were all things that were really important to me. It's my job to expand what I was doing for South Floridians to the entire country so that all Americans realize how the changing climate is impacting us in so many ways from from the pocketbook.

26:34Right. To even existential issues with the communities that we live in. Yeah. You talk about those stronger hurricanes and one of the first clips that I saw of your work was during Hurricane Milton when you learned that it was a Category 5 hurricane. It's just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours. I apologize. This is just horrific. Maximum sustained winds are 160 miles per hour. And you are emotional. on the air talking about the impacts of this and the broader impacts of climate change on the community that you serve. Get in the weeds for us a little bit here because I think there is a lot of commentary on the internet, we'll just go with that, about the causes of these hurricanes and whether they're getting worse as a result of climate change or not.

27:42Get very specific and granular with us. How do we know that climate change is responsible for these hurricanes and these weather events continuing to get worse? It's physics. Listen, it's science. In the case of hurricanes specifically, the warmer ocean temperatures, record-setting temperatures that we've seen in 2026 and we'll continue to see going forward, that allows for easier evaporation of water off the surface of the ocean. The water vapor then goes into the circulation of the hurricane, the air rises, eventually it cools, it condenses out, the vapor becomes liquid again, in other words, and that process of condensation releases energy into the fledgling hurricane and allows it to grow stronger.

28:34That's the very specific getting into the weeds of how it works in a hurricane. Now, we're not necessarily seeing a larger count. There's no more tropical storms and hurricanes around the planet than there were before human-induced climate change. But what is happening is that the ones that form are becoming stronger. There is a greater propensity for tropical cyclones to reach Category 4 and 5. Those intensities on the Safford-Simpson scale are the catastrophic ones, the hurricanes that truly can flatten communities and take lives. Yeah. When you're laying the science out and talking very directly about the reasoning for these hurricanes continuing to get worse in a community like South Florida, a community that has shifted in a more rightward leaning direction politically in recent years, has voted for people like the president who have cast doubt on a lot of the science that you're talking about.

29:38Have you received any pushback from folks in your community about the forecasts that you're giving, about the context that you're providing, or is it reaching people to hear it from a trusted voice in their community like you? It's the latter. I mean, the general reaction that I get from folks when I run into them at the post office, at the bank, at the grocery store, folks are thanking me for two things. My hurricane acumen, I guess, over many, many years of providing hurricane forecasts. And the second thing is climate communications. Folks are grateful that there is indeed somebody on the air, on TV, into their living rooms and bedrooms every night because they watch, right?

30:26They watch our newscasts. Talking about the kinds of things that are threatening South Florida and are threatening them. and their families and their communities? How can it be that, you know, when broadcast meteorologists are asked to talk about shooting stars and beautiful sunsets and even earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, because we are the station's scientists, if we're asked to talk about all those things, how can we not include this crisis that we're in right now, which requires action, to provide people, to empower people with education so that they know why it is so urgent to call for action on climate.

31:13And so again, the reaction has been very positive. I don't get pushback, generally speaking. Obviously, there are some digital platforms where trolling is more of a sport than it is in others. But, you know, I have a thick enough skin to deal with that. The other clip that people may have seen of your work came last year, in the first year of the president's second term, where you spoke about your ability to forecast hurricanes accurately and how it's been impacted by the actions of this administration, the cuts in funding to the National Weather Service and other tools that you rely on in order to make accurate forecasts.

31:56Confidently, I went on TV and I told you, it's going to turn. You don't need to worry. It is going to turn. And I am here to tell you that I'm not sure I can do that this year. Because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general, and I could talk about that for a long, long time. There's also a chance because of some of these cuts that no hurricane hunter aircraft will not be able to fly this year. And with less reconnaissance missions, we may be flying blind. And we may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline, like happened a couple of years ago in Hurricane Otis in Acapulco, Mexico.