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| It wasn't just hurricanes and wildfires that made 2017 such an expensive weather disaaster year. There were numerous tornado, severe weather, hail and flash flood outbreaks. This an Illinois tornado on February 28 2017, part of a large outhreak that affected much of the eastern U.S. Photo by Walker Ashley. |
That applies both for the United States in particular and the world in general.
There were 29 events costing at least a billion dollars in damage. That number is not a record high for all years. (adjusted for inflation.) Five other years had more billion dollar disasters.
However, some of the disasters were extremely expensive, so 2017 was the costliest on record, for the world as a whole and the United States in particular.
If you're into America First I have good/bad news for you. The United States had more billion dollar disasters than any other country, according to insurance broker Aon Benfield.
The good ole' US of A had 16 weather disasters with at least a billion dollars in damage. The country that came in Number 2 was China, with four such disasters.
Overall, weather disasters during 2017 in the United States cost $306 billion, definitely a new record. The hurricanes and wildfires got most of the headlines, and caused most of the expense. But there were other billion dollar plus weather disasters in the United States last year, including a drought in the Dakotas, floods in Missouri and Arkansas, and hail in Texas and Oklahoma.
Before you right off this report as another climate change screed, do know that it's apparent that climate change was only one factor that made 2017 so expensive.
Worldwide and in the United States, general wealth has increased. So when things are destroyed in a weather disaster, the tally is more expensive.
Likely a bigger factor in all these monetary losses is that more and more people live in places that are prone to big disasters. For instance, people flock to places along or near coastllines, many of which are sitting ducks for hurricanes.
Which helps explain why hurricanes Irma and Harvey were so expensive in the United States.
Wildfires contributed to the expensive tally in the United States. Again, more and more of us are getting in the way of these things. People keep building houses in and along the edges of the wilderness, for instance. Some of the damage from two billion plus dollar wildfire disasters was because houses and businesses were newly located in these interface regions.
As noted, tornadoes, flash floods and severe thunderstorms factored into the expensive 2017. Again, part of the problem is our habits. In the olden days, cities and towns were concentrated in pretty small areas. Now, urban and suburban sprawl extends over so many more square miles than it used to.
Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms are pretty narrow. When you had compact cities and towns, the targets were small. Tornadoes would often miss these communities and instead blast through rural farmland.
With suburbs extending further and further out from central cities the target is larger. Tornadoes used to need to be precise to wreck a community. Now, all they have to do is figuratively hit the broad side of a barn to cause a lot of destruction.
Still, climate change is certainly still a factor in some of these disasters. For instance, it's definitely possible the downpours with Hurricane Harvey in Texas were heavier than they otherwise would have been without climate change.
Harvey would have caused immense property damage with or without climate change, but the extra rain likely made things worse.
Those fires in California were probably made worse with climate change as well. True, the state's population increased and more people were in the way of the wildfires than decades ago. But California's extreme weather - drought to heavy rain last winter back to drought this year - increased the amount of dry vegetation that could catch fire.
Plus, the winter rains that normally hit California have largely failed to materialize, contributing to the fire problems.
I mentioned that 2017 didn't have the most $1 billion disasters in history, but it was the most expensive year.
Here's the major reason why: Incredibly, according to Aon Benfield, and this is pretty wild, three of the five most expensive weather disasters in world history occurred in 2017.
The figures, again adjusted for inflation, show that Hurricane Harvey was the second most expensive disaster, with $100 billion in losses. (Number 1 was 2005's Hurricane Katrina, with $161 billion in inflation-adjusted losses.
Also in 2017, Hurricane Maria was the fourth most expesnive disaster with $65 billion in losses. Hurricane Irma was fifth, with $55 billion in damage. (Number 3 was Hurricane Sandy in 2012, with $70 billion in losses.
About 10,000 people died in natural disasters, including earthquakes, in 2017. That sounds absolutely terrible and it is. Still, if you want a silver lining, the number of deaths from these disasters in 2017 was definitely below the 2001-2016 average of 71,000 fatalities.
The worst single disaster, in terms of fatalities, was a landslide in Sierra Leone caused by a flood, About 1,100 people died in that one. The death toll from Hurricane Maria is still hard to come by, but that storm might have killed 1,000 or so people.
And by the way, yes, I'm accusing the Trump administration of helping to cover up the number of deaths in Puerto Rico from Maria. Public relations, is of utmost importance to Trump, even more so than human lives. Or facts for that matter.
The worst disasters, as I noted, hit the United States. While there was an unacceptably high death toll in these U.S. disasters, we do have an excellent National Weather Service and plenty of other non-govermental meteorologists who got people out of the way of impending doom, thus saving lots of lives.
If you were lucky enough to escape damage from 2017's weather disasters, I still have some bad news. You still might end up paying.
According to PRI:
"Insurers are going to start passing these consts on to policyholders......People living in places that are at high risk for fires are going to end up seeing higher costs because that's the only way insurance companies can afford to cover increased damage."
It's not just fires. Insurance costs might go up because of payouts for other calamities, like floods, hail and the like.
Here in New England, we weren't really ground zero for any billion dollar disaster in 2017, but we did have expensive weather issues. One of the biggest were severe storms, tornadoes and flooding in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine on June 30 and July 1. The other big, expensive weather issue in the region was the severe windstorm and flooding in late October.
I have to say 2018 is totally off to a bad start in the billion dollar disaster department. We're barely into February, and there are at least a couple contenders for billion dollar losses. One of them was a nor'easter in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada in early January. That storm caused immense coastal flooding and other losses due to high winds and snow.
Also in January, there were two epic wind storms in western Europe, either one of which might have caused more than a billion dollars in losses.
And by the way, spring, summer and early autumn in the Northern Hemisphere seem to garner the most terrible disasters. More people live in the north than in the south. Spring, summer and early autumn in the Northern Hemisphere is the most likely season for expensive, fatal disasters like tornado outbreaks, hail and severe thunderstorms, serious floods, wildfires and hurricanes.
