Summary Stats

2023
2024

The distribution of damage from U.S. Billion-dollar disaster events from 1980 to 2024 is dominated by tropical cyclone losses. Tropical cyclones have caused the most damage ($1,543.2 billion, CPI-adjusted) and also have the highest average event cost ($23.0 billion per event, CPI-adjusted). Drought ($367.5 billion, CPI-adjusted), severe storms ($514.3 billion, CPI-adjusted) and inland flooding ($203.0 billion, CPI-adjusted) have also caused considerable damage based on the list of billion-dollar events.

Severe storms have caused the highest number of billion-dollar disaster events (203), while the average event cost is the lowest ($2.5 billion, CPI-adjusted). Tropical cyclones and flooding represent the second and third most frequent event types (67 and 45), respectively. Tropical cyclones are responsible for the highest number of deaths (7,211), followed by drought/heatwave events (4,658) and severe storms (2,145).

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