From the devastating and deadly wildfires in Southern California to the one-two punch of climate change-fueled hurricanes slamming into Florida and the Southeast, natural disasters that have impacted the U.S. in the last year have been the costliest the nation has seen in nearly a century, according to a new report from AccuWeather.
The Santa Ana wind-fanned firestorms erased neighborhoods and claimed 27 lives , both young and old. Hurricanes Helene and Milton brought more than 40 trillion gallons of rain to the region, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 people in North Carolina .
As the world continues to warm, climate change is making natural disasters stronger and more damaging, increasing in severity and frequency. The recent fires were fueled by hurricane-force winds, but also by tinderbox conditions driven by climate-fueled drought.
“The catastrophic wildfires burning in Southern California combined with destructive hurricane impacts last year have been the worst series of natural disasters in America since the Dust Bowl in the 1930s,” AccuWeather founder Dr. Joel N. Myers said in a recent release.
Myers said that drought, water, and insurance concerns would likely force Californians out of the state some 90 years after the Dust Bowl’s migration to California…