The first half of 2025 was the costliest on record for major disasters in the US, driven by huge wildfires in Los Angeles and storms that battered much of the rest of the country, according to a climate non-profit that has resurrected work axed by Donald Trump's administration that tracked the biggest disasters. In the first six months of this year, 14 separate weather-related disasters that each caused at least $1bn in damage hit the US, the Climate Central group has calculated.
In the 1980s, there were 33 weather events that caused at least $1 billion in damages (inflation adjusted) - or 3.3 per year. With each decade passing, the yearly average of such events increases. In the 1990s, there were 5.7 such events per year on average, in the aughts the average was 6.7 per year, in the 2010s it was 13.1, and in the last three years it was 22 billion-dollar events per year, including 28 in 2023 - the most of any year.