Kelly Hereid
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kellyhereid.bsky.social
Kelly Hereid
@kellyhereid.bsky.social
Climate scientist, geologist, and catastrophe modeler, Liberty Mutual. Posts on all things hurricane, wildfire, flood, earthquake, tornado. Sassy takes are mine not employer's.

📍Oakland, CA
Website: hereidk.strikingly.com
But main message that isn't getting through is that if you have to choose your building level mitigations - this says zone zero first, hands down. That's big news.
November 22, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Feels like we've hit "bargaining" stage.

All around bad news for foundation garden lovers
November 22, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Oh noo I've heard that too, "well if plants were just watered they won't burn!" 1, wildfires more common in drought when probably under watering restrictions anyway, but 2, just no.

Have you gotten tagged on the "native plants are ember catchers that will stop embers from reaching house!" one yet?
November 22, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Bet it's going to make you *real* popular in Berkeley though... just starting on zone zero enforcement in high risk areas, but people really love their gardens here.
November 22, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Yeah my jaw hit the floor when I saw difference in efficacy. If it holds it really makes me question the heavy building focus in CA - sure it helps a little, but putting gravel or a patio around your house is so much faster to deploy at scale.

Cc @michaelwara.bsky.social you'll be interested too.
November 22, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Ahhh yeah good call on duration, would be fun to link with RI driving those longer lived high cat storms too.

As you say, lots of ways to dig in.
November 20, 2025 at 10:31 PM
I'd imagine getting a good sample size with high enough confidence in pre fire state probably a challenge for modeling, but it sure is intriguing enough to want to dive in more.
November 20, 2025 at 6:01 PM
@gollnerfire.bsky.social am I missing a reason why y'all aren't shouting this result from the rooftops? Says to me that much cheaper veg mitigation is *way* more effective than expensive project of whole building retrofit.

Cc @cfarivar.bsky.social - also WAY drives up value of inspection services
November 20, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Oh dang this is cool - in a sense really shows how unusual the drought was.

Have you tried splitting this up by genesis location at all? Not to go all "blame ENSO for everything" but La Niñas dropping storms in the CB may stick some interesting decadal variability in here, upping landfall prob...
November 20, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Kelly Hereid
Yeah, I think the problem is right for some interesting simulation exercises. A colleague and I did something a little bit similar a few years ago where we knocked out the peak flow from every USGS gauge in the country and then re-computed the FFA: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
The weight of the flood‐of‐record in flood frequency analysis
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 20, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Aw dang, I hadn't seen this paper, this is really cool!

Also a *really* strong argument for making sure gages stay in place to collect that flood of record...
November 20, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Nothing immediately obvious comes to mind, although could visualize something like a long historical river gage where you run an extreme value fit to 100yr RP as you gradually add each annual peak and see how it varies as the record lengthens...
November 20, 2025 at 4:52 AM