Christine Barrett and her family had to climb on top of their kitchen cabinets because of flooding that surged into their house during Hurricane Ian. They put water wings on their 1-year-old, and were rescued by boat the next day.  Their community of North Port is about 5 miles inland. And the Barretts _ like many neighbors _ live in areas where flood insurance isn’t required. And therefore they don’t have it. Now many wonder how they’ll afford much-needed repairs.  There are concerns that not enough people nationally have flood insurance at a time when climate change is believed to be making storms wetter. The Insurance Information Institute says only about 4% of homeowners nationwide have flood insurance although 90% of catastrophes in the U.S. involve flooding.

Stocks are slumping on worries that a still-strong U.S jobs market may actually make a recession more likely. The S&P 500 was 2.1% lower Friday after the government said employers hired more workers last month than expected. Wall Street is worried the Federal Reserve could see that as proof the economy hasn’t slowed enough yet to get inflation under control. That could clear the way for continued, aggressive hikes to interest rates, something that risks causing a recession if done too severely. Treasury yields rose after the report's release, while oil prices were on track to close out their biggest weekly gain since March.

Drought and extreme heat have severely damaged much of the cotton harvest in the U.S., which produces roughly 35% of the world’s crop. Nowhere is this more apparent than the Texas High Plains, the windswept region that grows most of the crop in the nation’s top cotton-producing state. Forecasters and agricultural economists say that Texas cotton farmers could abandon nearly 70% of what they planted in the spring, making it the worst harvest in more than a decade. Losses could cost the region $1.2 billion, despite the federal insurance payments that farmers rely on during bad harvest years.