The finding
The billion-dollar disaster record from NOAA lists 403 US weather and climate events from 1980 to 2024 that each caused at least $1 billion in damage, totalling $2,917.6 billion in NOAA’s CPI-adjusted dollars. The count runs at 3.3 events a year in the 1980s and 23.0 a year in 2020 to 2024. Tropical cyclones carry 53% of the cost, but severe storms are 50% of the events. NOAA stopped updating the series in May 2025, so 2024 is the final year.
Headline figures
In this report
Key findings
- NOAA NCEI recorded 403 billion-dollar US weather and climate events from 1980 to 2024, with a combined CPI-adjusted cost of $2,917.6 billion.
- Measured per year, the event rate rose from 3.3 in the 1980s to 13.1 in the 2010s and 23.0 in 2020 to 2024, 7.0 times the 1980s rate (NOAA NCEI).
- The 2020s look smaller than the 2010s on a raw count (115 against 131) only because the final file covers 5 of its ten years.
- Tropical cyclones account for 67 events (17%) but 53% of the CPI-adjusted cost, at $23.0 billion per event on average (NOAA NCEI, 1980 to 2024).
- Severe storms account for 203 events (50%) and 18% of the cost, at $2.5 billion per event on average, and appear in 40 of the 45 years (NOAA NCEI).
- 9 of the 10 costliest events in the record are tropical cyclones (NOAA NCEI, CPI-adjusted).
- 2024 is the last year in the record. NOAA retired the product on 8 May 2025 (NOAA NESDIS notice of changes), and the file named for 2025 contains no 2025 events.
Events per decade, and the fair comparison
The usual way to present this record is a count by decade. That count is misleading for the most recent decade, because the final NOAA file ends in 2024. The 2020s bucket holds 5 years, not ten. Dividing each decade by the number of years it actually covers gives a rate that can be compared fairly. Source: NOAA NCEI final release.
| Decade | Years covered | Events | Events per year | CPI-adjusted cost | Cost per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980s | 10 | 33 | 3.3 | $219.6 billion | $22.0 billion |
| 1990s | 10 | 57 | 5.7 | $335.1 billion | $33.5 billion |
| 2000s | 10 | 67 | 6.7 | $621.9 billion | $62.2 billion |
| 2010s | 10 | 131 | 13.1 | $994.4 billion | $99.4 billion |
| 2020s | 5 | 115 | 23.0 | $746.5 billion | $149.3 billion |
The single year with the most events in the file is 2023, with 27. Years with no qualifying event: 1987. Counts of this kind need care in the telling. The series counts events above a fixed real threshold, so it rises when more property sits in harm’s way, when asset values grow, and when hazards change. NOAA’s documentation and the methodology paper by Smith and Katz (2013), Natural Hazards 67 discuss exposure, vulnerability and climate as drivers. This report does not test any of them, and the counts alone cannot separate them.
Cost rose roughly in step with frequency. In NOAA’s CPI-adjusted dollars the record averages $22.0 billion a year in the 1980s and $149.3 billion a year in 2020 to 2024, 6.8 times as much, against a 7.0 times rise in the event rate. A single year can move a decade’s cost total, because one large hurricane can outweigh dozens of storms. Source: NOAA NCEI.
Cost by disaster type
| Disaster type | Events | Share of events | CPI-adjusted cost | Share of cost | Mean per event | Median per event | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tropical cyclone | 67 | 16.6% | $1,543.0 billion | 52.9% | $23.0 billion | $6.9 billion | 7,211 |
| Severe storm | 203 | 50.4% | $514.0 billion | 17.6% | $2.5 billion | $1.9 billion | 2,145 |
| Drought | 32 | 7.9% | $367.8 billion | 12.6% | $11.5 billion | $7.0 billion | 4,658 |
| Flooding | 45 | 11.2% | $203.0 billion | 7.0% | $4.5 billion | $2.5 billion | 765 |
| Wildfire | 23 | 5.7% | $148.0 billion | 5.1% | $6.4 billion | $3.1 billion | 537 |
| Winter storm | 24 | 6.0% | $104.4 billion | 3.6% | $4.4 billion | $2.4 billion | 1,463 |
| Freeze | 9 | 2.2% | $37.3 billion | 1.3% | $4.1 billion | $3.6 billion | 162 |
Tropical cyclones are the cost leader by a wide margin. Drought is second on mean cost per event, at $11.5 billion; NOAA records a drought as one event even when it spans a whole season across many states. Severe storms, a NOAA category that covers hail, high wind and tornado outbreaks, are cheap per event by comparison: the median severe storm in the file cost $1.9 billion, against $6.9 billion for the median tropical cyclone. Source: NOAA NCEI.
Cost leader against frequency leader
This contrast is the part of the record that matters most for restoration. A tropical cyclone is a concentrated catastrophe: very large, rare in any given place, and arriving in a few seasons a decade for most coastlines. A billion-dollar severe storm is the opposite. Severe storms appear in 40 of the 45 years in the file, and 71 of the 115 events from 2020 to 2024 were severe storms (NOAA NCEI).
Our reading is that severe storms, not hurricanes, are the steadier source of catastrophe restoration work. Hail and wind damage break roofs and windows, and water then enters the building, which is where water mitigation and mould prevention begin. The headline cost leader shapes national totals; the frequency leader shapes the work calendar. That is an interpretation of the event counts, not a measurement of restoration revenue, which this file does not contain. Our tornado damage by state report ranks one part of that severe storm record by state.
The 10 costliest events
| Event | Type | CPI-adjusted cost | Unadjusted cost | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) | Tropical cyclone | $201.3 billion | $125.0 billion | 1,833 |
| Hurricane Harvey (August 2017) | Tropical cyclone | $160.0 billion | $125.0 billion | 89 |
| Hurricane Ian (September 2022) | Tropical cyclone | $119.6 billion | $111.8 billion | 152 |
| Hurricane Maria (September 2017) | Tropical cyclone | $115.2 billion | $90.0 billion | 2,981 |
| Hurricane Sandy (October 2012) | Tropical cyclone | $88.5 billion | $65.0 billion | 159 |
| Hurricane Ida (August 2021) | Tropical cyclone | $84.6 billion | $73.6 billion | 96 |
| Hurricane Helene (September 2024) | Tropical cyclone | $78.7 billion | $78.7 billion | 219 |
| Hurricane Irma (September 2017) | Tropical cyclone | $64.0 billion | $50.0 billion | 97 |
| Hurricane Andrew (August 1992) | Tropical cyclone | $60.5 billion | $27.0 billion | 61 |
| U.S. Drought/Heat Wave (Summer 1988) | Drought | $54.6 billion | $20.0 billion | 454 |
The ranking is dominated by hurricanes: 9 of the 10 are tropical cyclones (NOAA NCEI). The unadjusted column shows how much of an older event’s rank comes from NOAA’s price adjustment. The file does not state the base month of the adjustment. 14 of the 27 events that began in 2024 carry an adjusted cost above their unadjusted cost, so the adjusted figures are not simply 2024 annual-average dollars. Cite them as NOAA’s CPI-adjusted values, as published.
Why the record stopped
On 8 May 2025 NOAA announced that NCEI “will no longer be updating” the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product. The NOAA NESDIS notice of changes gives the reasons as evolving priorities, statutory mandates and staffing changes. The archived data remains available, with the final release covering 1980 to 2024.
There is a trap here. A file named for 2025 (events-US-1980-2025.csv) also returns a successful response from the NCEI server. When we retrieved both on 4 October 2026, it was byte-identical to the 2024 file, at 36,490 bytes. It contains no 2025 events. Any figure presented as a NOAA 2025 billion-dollar count did not come from that file.
Climate Central, a private nonprofit, has announced a continuation of the series from 2025. Its data is published through interactive visualisations, without a documented bulk download, and its licensing differs from a federal dataset. We do not use its figures here and do not mix them with the NOAA record.
What remains citable
| You can cite | You cannot cite |
|---|---|
| National event counts and costs for 1980 to 2024, with DOI 10.25921/stkw-7w73 | Any NOAA billion-dollar count or cost for a year after 2024 |
| Costs by NOAA disaster type, and per-event figures | State or county totals: the events file is national only |
| NOAA’s CPI-adjusted values, labelled as NOAA’s | A NOAA re-adjustment to any later price level |
| Named events and NOAA’s published death counts | A 2025 file: the 2025-named CSV repeats the 2024 data |
| The fact and date of the product’s retirement, to NESDIS | Continuation figures as if they were NOAA’s |
The events file has no state or county breakdown. Each row is a national event with a single cost. Anyone who needs a figure for one state has to use a different source, such as the NFIP claims behind our flood claims by state report or the inflation-adjusted flood damage series.
Method
How we counted. We downloaded the final NOAA NCEI events file (403 rows, 1980 to 2024) on 4 October 2026 and assigned each event to the year in its Begin Date. 4 events end in a later calendar year than they begin; they are counted once, in the starting year. Decades are grouped by starting year, and the per-year rate divides each decade’s events by the number of years the file covers in that decade. Costs are the CPI-Adjusted Cost column as published by NOAA, in millions of dollars, converted to billions for display; we did not re-derive the adjustment. Disaster types are NOAA’s own Disaster column. Deaths are the published Deaths column, reported without adjustment.
Reproduce this
Reproduce this
- Endpoint
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/events-US-1980-2024.csv- Query
Plain GET request. The file starts with two description lines; the header row begins with Name.- Rows retrieved
- 403 events (1980 to 2024)
- Retrieved
- 4 October 2026
Dataset DOI 10.25921/stkw-7w73. The 2025-named URL (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/events-US-1980-2025.csv) returns the same bytes as the 2024 file. Cost columns are in millions of US dollars.
What this does not show
What this does not show
- The adjustment is NOAA’s. CPI-adjusted costs are computed by NOAA using its own method. We report them as published.
- Most losses are below the threshold. The record lists only events above $1 billion. The large majority of weather losses, including most local storms and floods, never appear.
- National only. There is no state or county breakdown in the events file.
- Frozen at 2024. NOAA stopped updating the product in May 2025, so nothing after 2024 can be cited from it.
- Estimates carry uncertainty. NCEI’s documentation and Smith and Katz (2013), Natural Hazards 67 describe the cost estimates as uncertain, drawing on insured and uninsured loss sources of differing quality.
- Counts are not causes. A rising count of threshold events reflects exposure, asset values and hazard together. This report makes no causal claim.
Most quotable figures
- NOAA recorded 403 billion-dollar US weather and climate disasters from 1980 to 2024, costing $2,917.6 billion CPI-adjusted (NOAA NCEI, DOI 10.25921/stkw-7w73).
- Billion-dollar disasters ran at 23.0 a year in 2020 to 2024, against 3.3 a year in the 1980s (NOAA NCEI).
- Severe storms are 50% of NOAA billion-dollar events but 18% of the cost; tropical cyclones are 17% of events and 53% of the cost (1980 to 2024, NOAA NCEI).
- NOAA’s billion-dollar disaster file ends in 2024; the 2025-named file is identical to the 2024 file (NOAA NCEI, retrieved 4 October 2026).
Questions this report answers
How many billion-dollar disasters has the US had?
NOAA NCEI recorded 403 from 1980 to 2024, with a combined CPI-adjusted cost of $2,917.6 billion.
Is there a NOAA billion-dollar disaster count for 2025?
No. NOAA stopped updating the product on 8 May 2025. The file named for 2025 is byte-identical to the 2024 file and contains no 2025 events (NOAA NCEI, retrieved 4 October 2026).
Why did NOAA stop the billion-dollar disaster series?
The NESDIS notice of changes cites evolving priorities, statutory mandates and staffing changes.
Which disaster type costs the most?
Tropical cyclones, at 53% of CPI-adjusted cost from 1980 to 2024 and $23.0 billion per event on average (NOAA NCEI).
Which disaster type happens most often?
Severe storms, at 203 of 403 events (50%) from 1980 to 2024 (NOAA NCEI).
Can I get billion-dollar disaster figures by state?
Not from the NOAA events file, which is national only. State figures need a different source.
Can I reuse this data?
Yes. Our tables and derived figures are released under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to Remediation Insider. The underlying NOAA data is public and should be cited with its DOI.
How to cite
Remediation Insider. The Billion-Dollar Disaster Record, 1980 to 2024, and Why It Stopped. https://remediationinsider.com/billion-dollar-disaster-record/ (retrieved 4 October 2026).
Data and tables in this report are released under CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Remediation Insider.
Sources
- NOAA NCEI, U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, final release, 1980 to 2024. DOI: 10.25921/stkw-7w73. Events file retrieved 4 October 2026.
- NOAA NESDIS notice of changes: Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, 8 May 2025. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- Smith and Katz (2013), Natural Hazards 67: US billion-dollar weather and climate disasters: data sources, trends, accuracy and biases.
- Climate Central, billion-dollar disasters continuation. Referenced for its existence only; no figures used.
- No survey, interview or physical inspection was conducted for this report. Every figure is computed from the retrieved NOAA file.