Last year, the U.S. set a record for hugely expensive weather- and climate-related disasters: a hurricane in Florida, floods in California, a wildfire in Hawaii, a winter storm in the Northeast, tornados all over. The nation was hit by 28 catastrophes with total damages of more than $1 billion. Over the past seven years, reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 137 separate billion-dollar disasters, including five Category 4 or 5 hurricanes, have caused more than $1 trillion in devastation.
“It is important to keep in mind that these estimates do not reflect the total cost of U.S. weather and climate disasters, only those associated with events [with] more than $1 billion in damages,” said a NOAA report earlier this year. “That means they are a conservative estimate of how much extreme weather costs the United States each year” (boldface NOAA’s).
