Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters

Summary Stats

CPI-AdjustedUnadjusted

Billion-dollar events to affect the United States from 1980 to 2020 (CPI-AUnadjusted)
Disaster Type	Events	Events/Year	Percent Frequency	Total Costs	Percent of Total Costs	Cost/Event	Cost/Year	Deaths	Deaths/Year
Drought	28	0.7	9.0%	$313.7B ^CI	13.7%	$11.2B	$7.7B	3,910^†	95^†
Flooding	37	0.9	11.9%	$188.4B ^CI	8.2%	$5.1B	$4.6B	675	16
Freeze	9	0.2	2.9%	$37.4B ^CI	1.6%	$4.2B	$0.9B	162	4
Severe Storm	145	3.5	46.8%	$365.7B ^CI	16.0%	$2.5B	$8.9B	1,870	46
Tropical Cyclone	53	1.3	17.1%	$1,199.2B ^CI	52.3%	$22.6B	$29.2B	6,604	161
Wildfire	19	0.5	6.1%	$125.0B ^CI	5.5%	$6.6B	$3.0B	410	10
Winter Storm	19	0.5	6.1%	$62.6B ^CI	2.7%	$3.3B	$1.5B	1,052	26
All Disasters	310	7.6	100.0%	$2,292.0B ^CI	100.0%	$7.4B	$55.9B	14,683	358
Drought	28	0.7	11.1%	$165.7B ^CI	11.6%	$5.9B	$4.0B	3,910^†	95^†
Flooding	30	0.7	11.9%	$105.4B ^CI	7.4%	$3.5B	$2.6B	576	14
Freeze	8	0.2	3.2%	$15.5B ^CI	1.1%	$1.9B	$0.4B	162	4
Severe Storm	110	2.7	43.5%	$224.9B ^CI	15.7%	$2.0B	$5.5B	1,493	36
Tropical Cyclone	48	1.2	19.0%	$804.7B ^CI	56.2%	$16.8B	$19.6B	6,561	160
Wildfire	17	0.4	6.7%	$89.3B ^CI	6.2%	$5.3B	$2.2B	393	10
Winter Storm	12	0.3	4.7%	$27.6B ^CI	1.9%	$2.3B	$0.7B	709	17
All Disasters	253	6.2	100.0%	$1,433.1B ^CI	100.0%	$5.7B	$35.0B	13,804	337

^†Deaths associated with drought are the result of heat waves. (Not all droughts are accompanied by extreme heat waves.)

Flooding events (river basin or urban flooding from excessive rainfall) are separate from inland flood damage caused by tropical cyclone events.

The confidence interval (CI) probabilities (75%, 90% and 95%) represent the uncertainty associated with the disaster cost estimates. Monte Carlo simulations were used to produce upper and lower bounds at these confidence levels (Smith and Matthews, 2015).

Confidence	Lower	Upper
75%	$B	$B
90%	$B	$B
95%	$B	$B

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).

Summary Stats

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