Severity of Weather Disasters Hits 10-Year High in 2021
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the impact of weather disasters in the U.S. hit a new apex in 2021. Hundreds of lives, and billions of dollars, were lost due to cataclysmic events like flooding, drought, severe storms and major hurricanes, tornadoes and forest fires. Because this is highly relevant to utility emergency preparedness, let’s pull back the curtain on the numbers.
How Weather Disasters Impacted the U.S. in 2021
According to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the U.S. suffered 20 weather disasters in 2021, each of which exceeded $1 billion in damages. The total overall cost of these events in 2021 is estimated to be approximately $145 billion.
Surprisingly, although the number of billion-dollar weather events experienced in 2021 was higher than average, it did not break the all-time record of 22 set in 2020. That said, the number of fatalities attributed to weather disasters in 2021 was 688, the most since 2011 and more than double the number of deaths experienced in 2020 (262).
NOAA cites climate change as the leading culprit for the higher-than-average frequency and severity. Over the last 127 years, 2021 ranked as the fourth-warmest year on record with an average temperature of 54.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5F degrees above the 20th-century average). Additionally, December 2021 was the warmest December on record, coming in at nearly 7 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
On the other hand, Winter Storm Uri (Feb. 2021) was the coldest event in the continental U.S. in over 30 years and caused 10 million power outages. In fact, Winter Storm Uri caused the second-highest level of damages ($24 billion) and the second-highest number of fatalities (226) in 2021.
That said, the extreme cold during Winter Storm Uri was a bit of an anomaly; most of the billion-dollar events were precipitated by warmer temperatures and in fact many parts of the country experienced record highs.
So, there you have it, a snapshot of the numbers behind 2021’s weather disasters. The bottom line for emergency preparedness? Keep fighting the good fight!
