The Washington Post reports:
“U.S. has seen a record number of weather disasters this year. It’s only September.
“It takes a lot to surprise me,” said a government scientist who tracks billion-dollar disasters. “But this year has been a surprise.”
Hurricane Idalia, which barreled through the Big Bend region of Florida late last month before battering other communities in Georgia and the Carolinas, thankfully wasn’t the cataclysmic storm that forecasters had feared days before.
But the Category 3 hurricane, which caused widespread flooding in some communities, still left behind a costly trail of damage — and solidified an unsettling place in the record books.
Idalia became the 23rd “billion dollar” weather disaster to strike the United States this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on Monday, eclipsing the previous record of 22 set in 2020. And there are still four months left in this year, with the very real potential for more devastating weather ahead.”
23 ‘billion-dollar’ natural disasters have hit the US in 2023 – The Washington Post
This week in 1926, Miami was destroyed by a hurricane.
“Damages in 1926 dollars were estimated at $105 million, which would be more than $164 billion in today’s dollars.”
There has been a huge increase in the population of the Gulf Coast since the 1920s. The amount of property at risk is orders of magnitude higher.
