Costly weather disasters kept raining down on America last year, pounding the nation with 18 climate extremes that caused at least $1 billion in damage each — and totaling more than $165 billion — federal climate scientists calculated Tuesday.
More than 40% of the continental United States was under official drought conditions for 119 straight weeks, a record in the 22 years of the federal drought monitor, easily passing the old mark of 68 straight weeks, Spinrad said. The country peaked at 63% of the nation in drought in 2022. Spinrad said he expects the atmospheric river pouring rain on California to provide some relief, but not a lot.
Climate change is a hard to ignore factor in extremes, from deadly heat to droughts and flooding, Smith and other officials said. Those years dwarf what happened in the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s. For example, in the entire decade of the 1990s there were 55 different billion-dollar disasters that cost $313 billion total and claimed 3,062 lives.
That prevented freeze was one of two"silver linings" in 2022 extremes, Smith said. The other was that the wildfire season, though still costing well over $1 billion, wasn't as severe as past years, except in New Mexico and Texas, he said.
The year was 1.5 inches below normal for rain and snow, the 27th driest out of 128 years, Gleason said.
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