With 28 events, 2023 easily surpassed 2020 as the year with the most billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. The preliminary price tag is at least $92.9 billion.
The country experienced 18 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, tying for third place for the most disasters in a calendar year.
Second-highest in number and third-highest in costs, 2021 was another extreme year for weather and climate disasters in the United States.
2020 smashed the previous record for billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. NCEI's Adam Smith gives us a full accounting of the year's events.
In 2019, the U.S. experienced 14 separate disasters costing at least a billion dollars each. Since 1980, 258 billion-dollar disasters have brought damages in excess of $1.75 trillion.
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) tracks U.S. weather and climate events that have great economic and societal impacts. Since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 241 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index, as of January 2019). The cumulative cost for these 241 events exceeds $1.6 trillion.
Counting the California wildfires as a single event, the U.S. experienced 16 weather or climate disasters costing at least $1 billion dollars, tying the year with 2011. Total estimated cost was a record-setting $306.2 billion.
2016 saw 15 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion. How does that compares to history, and which disaster type was especially disruptive during the year?