Billion dollar disasters: a record 9 in 2008

[CrazyC83]

That's right, there were nine weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage in 2008. That was a record:

*Year-long drought in South and west, $2 billion

*Super Tuesday tornado outbreak - $1 billion

*Tornado outbreak in 4th and 5th weeks of May - $2.4 billion

*Severe weather/tornado outbreak in 1st and 2nd weeks of June - $1.1 billion

*Midwest floods in June - $15 billion

*Summer and fall wildfires - $2 billion

*Hurricane Dolly - $1.2 billion (corrected to $1.05 billion)

*Hurricane Gustav - $5 billion (corrected to $4.5 billion)

*Hurricane Ike - $27 billion (corrected to $22.4 billion)

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/billionz.html

[NC George]

Hopefully they'll make some more episodes, Billion Dollar Disasters was one of my favorite disaster shows.

[Cyclone1]

With these arctic blasts rolling through Florida, we may be in for a billion dollar disaster down here, if the oranges freeze. Happened twice in the early 80's.

I had a book that listed a bunch of billion dollar weather disasters. Very interesting stuff. A lot of hard freezes were included, to my surprise.

[jinftl]

Estimated cost of Drought of 1980 - $20.0 billion in 1980 dollars....$55.4 billion adjusted for inflation.

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/billionz.html#chron

[Squarethecircle]

And that's just in the US. Nargis caused a rough estimate of 10 billion dollars in damage, which is staggering for a poor region like Myanmar.