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NOAA: 18 weather events total more than $168 billion in damage
A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says damage from weather disasters totaled more than $165 billion in 2022.
Climatologist Brian Fuchs with the National Drought Mitigation Center says drought was a big story. “But, we also had some severe weather outbreaks in the Central Plains and some hail events that were significant enough with property and agricultural losses associated with them.”
The NOAA found 18 events caused more than $1 billion dollars in damage and Fuchs says that’s due to an increase in weather extremes. “We saw everything from the hurricane in the Southeast, tornadoes in the Southeast, thunderstorms and high winds and hail issues to fire and drought all show up on the map. Over the last couple of years, we have seen quite a bit of these disasters.”
The drought and extreme heat was the second-costliest event, which included areas of Central Plains and Western U.S, totaled $22.2 billion.
According to the NOAA, 2022 was the third-costliest year since 1980 when the agency began generating the report.
So NOAA is now also an adjuster for property and agriculture damage?