Eight Billion Dollar Disasters for United States this year

It’s just the month of July and bad news has already come by for the United States. Eight different weather disasters in the country have caused a damage of about $1 billion at the least as per a government report. The costliest out of all these weather events this year was the series of hailstorms in Texas which amounted to a whopping $3.5 billion.

As per NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, two floods and six severe thunderstorms have been responsible for damage of such high amounts. Also, the damage cost of the West Virginia floods which occurred in late June is still being evaluated.

These weather disasters include the Southern/Eastern Tornadoes (Feb 22-24), Texas and Louisiana flooding (Mar 8-12), Southern Severe Weather (Mar 17-18), North Texas Hailstorm (Mar 23-24), North/Central Texas Hailstorm (Apr 10-12), Houston Floods (Apr 17-18), South/Southeastern tornadoes (Apr 26-May 2) and Rockies/Central tornadoes & severe storms (May 21-26).

In the year 2015, a total of 10 disasters ended up reaching the $1 billion mark. These events included five severe storms, two floods, a wildfire event, a drought as well as a winter storm. About 155 people were killed and the damages amounted to $22 billion.

Since the year 1980, there have been about 196 weather and climate disasters where the damage cost has surpassed the $1 billion mark.  In total all these weather events cost $1.1 trillion.

Image Credit: ctvnews.ca