US: 18 weather events each with $1bn losses up to September 2021
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Nov 2021
US weathered 18 weather and climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1bn each across the country till September during 2021.
These events include one drought/heat wave event, two flooding events, nine severe storm events, four tropical cyclone events, one wildfire event and one winter storm/cold wave event. This is four events shy of the 2020 annual record of 22 events according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) environmental report.
Through September, disasters in 2021 have also caused more than twice the number of fatalities than from all the events that occurred in 2020.
The latest monthly summary from NOAA updated the 2021 billion-dollar weather and climate disaster dataset to include 10 events from September 2021 — five severe storm events, four tropical cyclone events and one wildfire event.
The US disaster costs for the first nine months of 2021 are $104.8bn, already surpassing the disaster costs for all of 2020 ($100.2bn, inflation-adjusted).
Since records began in 1980, NOAA said the US has sustained 308 separate weather and climate disasters where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1bn per event based on the CPI adjustment to 2021.
The total cost of these 308 events exceeds $2.085tn and disaster costs over the last five years
2017-2021 will exceed a record $700bn, reflecting the increased exposure and vulnerability of the US to extreme weather and climate events.
Hurricane Ida is the most costly disaster to-date in 2021 — exceeding $60bn — and will be ranked among the top-five most costly hurricanes on record (since 1980) for the US. Ida’s total cost will likely increase further, which will be reflected in NOAA’s end-of-year report. M