PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Hurricane evacuation patterns differ based on where the storm hits

2025-10-02
(Press-News.org) A study comparing evacuation patterns in response to two 2024 hurricanes, Milton and Helene, found that people in coastal areas with frequent hurricane exposure were much more likely to travel out of harm’s way compared to people in inland areas who were more likely to stay put. Researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health led the study. Their findings appear in the journal Environmental Research Letters.  

These geographic differences are likely due to a combination of factors, including access to transportation infrastructure, social norms, and risk perception, the authors argue. 

On September 26, 2024, Helene (Category 4 at both its strongest and landfall) made landfall near Perry, Florida, before moving inland, where it led to historic rainfall and flooding in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, resulting in an estimated 219 deaths and losses of $78.7 billion. Thirteen days later, on October 9, Milton (Category 5 at its strongest and Category 3 at landfall) made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, and passed through central Florida, resulting in an estimated 32 deaths and losses of $34.3 billion. 

The researchers compared aggregated cell phone data on human mobility in the affected regions. While there were disruptions to cell phone service during the hurricane periods, the researchers focused on relative changes in mobility, which were largely unaffected by outages.

Milton primarily impacted coastal areas with frequent hurricane exposure, prompting sharp increases in out-of-region travel before landfall and sustained elevated mobility post-disaster. In contrast, Helene primarily affected inland areas, where mobility changes were relatively modest; affected coastal counties showed stronger mobility responses than inland counties. 

Hurricane Milton led to a significant rise in out-region (29%) movement beginning three days before landfall. In contrast, during Hurricane Helene, out-of-region movement increased only modestly (5%) in the three days before landfall, despite emergency declarations and evacuation orders.

Access to financial resources and transportation infrastructure may shape people’s decisions and ability to evacuate, the authors argue. Areas with higher socioeconomic status and population density in coastal regions may have greater access to transportation, information, and resources, enabling faster evacuation. In contrast, more dispersed inland areas with lower levels of socioeconomic status likely lack these supports, potentially limiting their mobility.

Climate Change Extends the Reach of Hurricanes Into Inland Areas There has been significant attention given to the way that climate change is increasing the frequency and destructiveness of hurricanes. Climate change is also pushing hurricanes into new areas and presenting new risks not often associated with hurricanes. Most fatalities of Hurricane Helene occurred in counties with low historical hurricane risk, including many counties where the researchers saw low levels of evacuation. In inland areas, most deaths were due to river flooding, infrastructure damage, and indirect causes such as power outages and medical emergencies. In coastal communities, storm surges were the primary driver of fatalities.

“Social norms, past experiences, and the way people perceive their risk all shape how people respond to threats like hurricanes,” says study first author Qing Yao, PhD, an associate research scientist in environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman School. “People in coastal areas are used to the idea of evacuating, whereas people living in inland areas may be more likely to think they are protected.” 

“As climate change expands the geographical range of hurricanes into previously unaffected areas, there is an increased need for tailoring disaster preparedness and response strategies to the affected populations and the risks they face,” concludes senior author Sen Pei, PhD, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman School. 

Additional authors include Victoria Lynch, Xiao Wu, and Robbie Parks at Columbia Mailman School, and Molei Liu at Peking University, Beijing, China

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (grant DMS-2229605), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) (grants ES007322, ES033742, ES036202, ES009089), and the National Institute of Aging (NIA) (grant AG093975).

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Stem Cell Reports welcomes new members to its Editorial Board

2025-10-02
Expanding the depth and breadth of scientific expertise that defines Stem Cell Reports, the official journal of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, 13 distinguished researchers have joined the Editorial Board. Their appointment broadens representation across the diverse and international landscape of stem cell science and reinforces the Board’s commitment to championing the journal, raising its global visibility, and ensuring rigorous, high-quality peer review. “I am delighted to welcome our new editorial board members to Stem Cell Reports, said Janet Rossant, editor-in-chief. “Their breadth of expertise ...

Researchers develop molecular qubits that communicate at telecom frequencies

2025-10-02
A team of scientists from the University of Chicago, the University of California Berkeley, Argonne National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has developed molecular qubits that bridge the gap between light and magnetism—and operate at the same frequencies as telecommunications technology. The advance, published today in Science, establishes a promising new building block for scalable quantum technologies that can integrate seamlessly with existing fiber-optic networks. Because the new molecular qubits can interact at telecom-band frequencies, the work points toward future quantum networks—sometimes called the “quantum internet.” ...

Mayo Clinic awarded up to $40 million by ARPA-H for pioneering air safety research

2025-10-02
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic has been selected to lead a groundbreaking research project focused on improving indoor air quality and safety in healthcare settings by the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The project, part of the ARPA-H BREATHE program, aims to develop new ways to monitor and improve air in real time, helping protect public health in buildings nationwide. Mayo Clinic will lead the Hospital Air QUality (HAIQU): Breathing Life into Patient Care project, focusing on improving indoor air quality in hospitals to enhance health. "Maintaining high indoor ...

People with Down syndrome have early neuroinflammation

2025-10-02
Down syndrome is associated with accelerated aging. It is estimated that up to 90% of individuals with the condition develop Alzheimer’s disease before the age of 70. A study by researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil identified high levels of neuroinflammation in young individuals with Down syndrome, an additional factor explaining the high prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in older people with the condition. The discovery paves the way for strategies to prevent and monitor the disease. The study, which was published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia and ...

CNIO researchers create the “human repairome”, a catalogue of DNA “scars” that will help define personalized cancer treatments

2025-10-02
The human repairome, REPAIRome, will allow researchers around the world to rapidly check out how each of the 20,000 human genes affects DNA repair. Created by researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), it is published today in the journal Science. The human repairome is ‘a powerful resource for the scientific community’, the authors write in Science. It has ‘implications for human health, including cancer treatment’. It also allows progress ‘towards full control of CRISPR-Cas gene-editing technologies’, they add. The repairome ...

Strengthening biosecurity screening for genes that encode proteins of concern

2025-10-02
Advances in artificial intelligence-assisted protein engineering are enabling breakthroughs in protein design, but they also introduce biosecurity challenges related to potential production of harmful proteins. Though screening software to detect harmful proteins exists, a new multi-month analysis of such software reports that this software has vulnerabilities; some proteins of concern could evade detection. Critically, the study also offers a way to improve detection rates of proteins of concern going forward. AI-assisted protein design (AIPD) enables powerful advances in medicine and biology, enabling researchers to modify existing proteins or design wholly new ones ...

Global wildfire disasters are growing in frequency and cost

2025-10-02
Wildfire disasters worldwide are growing notably in frequency and cost, according to a new study, with nearly half of the most damaging events over the last 44 years occurring in just the past decade, driven largely by increasingly extreme fire weather in vulnerable, densely populated regions. The findings, informed by an analysis of global reinsurance data and international disaster reports, reveal a concerning trend and highlight the need to adapt for a more fire-prone world. Humans have coexisted with wildfires for millennia, but climate change, land mismanagement, and expansion into flammable landscapes ...

Wildfire management: Reactive response and recovery, or proactive mitigation and prevention

2025-10-02
Catastrophic wildfires – those causing massive damage and soaring suppression costs – are increasing in frequency and intensity worldwide, a trend expected to worsen with climate change. In a Policy Forum, Robert Gray and colleagues use British Columbia (BC), Canada, as a case study of a government at a crossroads: continue reactive spending on suppression and recovery or invest in strategies to reduce future wildfire risk. “Although we focus on BC, this same tough question, along with lessons learned and our main recommendations, apply to regional ...

Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of a low-temperature brown dwarf

2025-10-02
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected the molecule phosphine beyond our Solar System, according to a new study, finding it in the atmosphere of the cold brown dwarf Wolf 1130C. The presence of the phosphorus-containing molecule phosphine (PH3) is well established in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, as well as in some giant stars. Although models predict that PH3 should be similarly common in gas giant exoplanets and brown dwarfs, searches for the molecule in the atmospheres of those objects have shown it to be in very low abundance, if not totally absent. Using the JWST NIRSpec instrument, Adam Burgasser ...

Scientists develop rapid and scalable platform for in planta directed evolution

2025-10-02
Directed evolution is a laboratory technique that mimics natural selection and allows scientists to evolve genes and the proteins they encode. Traditionally, this technique has been used in microbes, mammalian cells, or in test tubes. Now, researchers led by Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Prof. QIU Jinlong from the Institute of Microbiology of CAS have developed a new system that enables rapid and scalable directed evolution of diverse genes directly ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

The Lancet: Billions lack access to healthy diets as food systems drive climate and health crises, but sustainable, equitable solutions are within reach, says new EAT-Lancet report

Countries with highest reported levels of hearing loss have lowest use of hearing aids

Early medical abortion at home up to 12 weeks is safe, effective, and comparable to hospital care

New approach to gravitational wave detection opens the Milli-Hz Frontier

Rice membrane extracts lithium from brines with greater speed, less waste

Exercise lowers disease risk. This researcher wants to understand how

Hurricane evacuation patterns differ based on where the storm hits

Stem Cell Reports welcomes new members to its Editorial Board

Researchers develop molecular qubits that communicate at telecom frequencies

Mayo Clinic awarded up to $40 million by ARPA-H for pioneering air safety research

People with Down syndrome have early neuroinflammation

CNIO researchers create the “human repairome”, a catalogue of DNA “scars” that will help define personalized cancer treatments

Strengthening biosecurity screening for genes that encode proteins of concern

Global wildfire disasters are growing in frequency and cost

Wildfire management: Reactive response and recovery, or proactive mitigation and prevention

Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of a low-temperature brown dwarf

Scientists develop rapid and scalable platform for in planta directed evolution

New tiny prehistoric fish species unlocks origins of catfish and carp

Plant microbiota: War and peace under the surface

Fossilized ear bones rewrite the history of freshwater fish

Detection of phosphine in a brown dwarf atmosphere raises more questions

USF study: Ancient plankton hint at steadier future for ocean life

MIT researchers find a simple formula could guide the design of faster-charging, longer-lasting batteries

Towards efficient room-temperature fluorine recovery from fluoropolymers

Mapping RNA-protein 'chats' could uncover new treatments for cancer and brain disease

The hidden burden of solitude: How social withdrawal influences the adolescent brain

Kidney disease study reveals unexpected marker

AI wrote nearly a quarter of corporate press releases in 2024

The ‘big bad wolf’ fears the human ‘super predator’ – for good reason

Kidney organoid unlocks genetic cause of chronic kidney disease

[Press-News.org] Hurricane evacuation patterns differ based on where the storm hits