As Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida, First Street and Zillow (Z) are teaming up to create a first-of-its-kind rating system to assess climate risks on for-sale properties. The monitored risks include heat, wind, and most importantly, flooding.

First Street head of climate implications Jeremy Porter joins Asking for a Trend to discuss how this tool can help homeowners as severe weather events become more frequent.

While hurricanes are becoming more frequent, Porter says the trend is negative, telling Yahoo Finance, "We're seeing potentially more storms, and if not more storms, stronger storms when they do occur."

"Our mission has always been to quantify and communicate climate risk, and when we first started about eight years ago, there were really very few resources that people had for understanding what their climate risk looked like and the resources that did exist for things like FEMA zones. And FEMA zones are just not that user-friendly, they don't capture all of the sources of flood risk. So what we ended up doing was creating our own hazard models at the property level so people could understand not only what the risk is today, but what the risk is into the future, what the risk is to their specific property, and how that might impact their pocketbooks," he says of the Zillow partnership.

He explains that this information is crucial for homebuyers to make "smart decisions" about their future. Porter notes that weather is becoming a key issue for Americans, explaining that many in Miami are avoiding low-ground residences. However, a significant move to areas away from major hurricane threats has yet to be seen.

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl