From The San Francisco Chronicle – Increasingly strong storms are responsible for more than a third of the nation’s flood costs, swelling the tab by billions of dollars a year as climate change continues to fuel more extreme weather, according to new research at Stanford University. The research, which is among the first to put a price tag on heavier rainfall, found that the changing weather is responsible for $75 billion of the cumulative $199 billion of U.S. flood damage from 1998 to 2017. Many of the losses over that period were in California. The worsening storms are leaving more homes and communities underwater and exacerbating what’s already the costliest natural disaster in the United States. (more)