Nathaniel Bullard, Columnist

World's Biggest Weather Threat Isn't Hurricanes

Big storms steal the headlines in the U.S., but flooding puts far more people at risk. And it's going to get worse.

January 12, 2018 at 7:00 PM UTC

Nat Bullard is a senior contributor to BloombergNEF and writes the Sparklines column for Bloomberg Green. He advises early-stage climate technology companies and climate investors.

It's time to prepare ourselves.
Photographer: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week released its list of climate events that have had the greatest economic impact on the U.S. from 1980 to 2017. At $306 billion, last year’s sustained costs due to weather disasters was 43 percent higher than in 2005, which had hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Hurricane Harvey alone caused $125 billion in damage, only $1 billion less than all of 2012 (which included Hurricane Sandy).

Tropical cyclones are the most damaging weather events that threaten the U.S. Since 1980, weather disasters have incurred just over $1.5 trillion in costs, with hurricanes making up 55 percent, followed far behind by droughts and then severe storms. Flooding is a distant fourth, followed by cold and fires.