Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!
In this week’s newsletter we have charts on … the stock market under Trump, how inflation has raised prices on different grocery items, mapping the Myanmar earthquake, the meandering path of a tropical cyclone and a look at “music DNA”.
But first … disaster strikes the disaster map
Boffins at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency spent years creating an extreme weather risk index down to the county level. Only a month or so after launch, the Trump administration deleted it.
But our Guardian US colleagues have recreated the index, using projections on worsening storms, wildfires and floods.
The solid red area near Los Angeles looks particularly troubling.
Five charts from the fortnight
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1. More disaster maps
Thousands were killed by the earthquake that struck Myanmar and hundreds remain missing. Reuters have mapped the 7.7-magnitude quake that struck the region on Friday.
The piece also includes some great visuals on how earthquakes occur and the history of earthquakes in the region.
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2. What could we buy for one nuclear sub?
Last week’s budget measures paper was the “skinniest” in 20 years – because of the imminent election, but also the result of an ongoing trend.
The centrepiece of the budget was a surprise tax cut. But, coming in at just over $17bn, it wouldn’t even buy you half a nuclear submarine*. With questions mounting over the Aukus nuclear submarine program, we took a look through the budget papers to see what one nuclear sub would buy us.
*An important caveat is that we don’t know what the final cost will be for the Aukus nuclear subs for almost another two decades. We took the estimated figure when the deal was announced and divided it by the potential number of submarines: eight. The spending obviously includes lots of non-materiel things like training and research programs.
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3. The unpredictable path to the deep north
For days before Cyclone Alfred made landfall, the forecast path and intensity of the weather system were in flux. This meant an anxious wait for communities up and down the Queensland coast, and made it harder to prepare.
The visual stories team at the Sydney Morning Herald mapped the cyclone’s unpredictable path.
Something else I learned from this story – at least 20 cyclones have come within a few hundred kilometres of south-east Queensland since records began.
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4. The cost of US inflation in 10 items
Eggs have become so expensive in the US that millions have reportedly stopped buying them entirely. But the spiralling cost of food isn’t a recent phenomenon.
Egg prices have risen by more than 310% in the US over the past 20 years, even as the federal minimum wage has largely stagnated since 2009. This beautiful illustration piece by our colleague Mona Chalabi shows the rising cost of 10 different items.
We’ve only screenshotted a small section of the beautiful graphic but you can click through for the rest.
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5. A viral chart about the stock market under Trump
A chart showing the decline of US companies’ stock prices under the terms of various presidents went viral several weeks ago, showing up on BlueSky, Reddit and Twitter (I refuse to call it X).
Here’s how it looked in the Economist’s Graphic Detail series ($):
The earliest version of the chart format I could find was by Owen Winter from the Economist, who has been updating the chart since at least 4 March. His latest predates the “liberation day” tariffs announcement though – the plunge continues.
Spotlight on … more stock market and tariff chaos
A Reuters’ visual explainer on how tariffs aren’t all the same
Guardian US on the global chaos from Trump’s tariffs
A timeline of key tariff announcements
How Trump’s tariffs will hit Australia, in four charts ($)
Off the Charts
Perennial Crunch favourites The Pudding are back with another banger about bangers. This time its a deep dive into the “DNA” of music – a visual (and auditory) look at how ideas and themes repeat and can be traced back through history.
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