Climate Alarmists Wrong: Increased Economic Damage Doesn’t Prove Storms Are Getting Worse

One of the indicators that climate alarmists use to push the climate crisis narrative is the increasing cost of storms.

The logic appears straightforward: a storm that did $10 million in damage must be more severe than one that did $1 million in damage, and since storms cost less money in the past, they claim this proves that storms are getting more severe.

They also set dollar thresholds for severe storms, and since more storms exceed this dollar threshold, they claim that severe storms are occurring more frequently.

However, this reasoning fundamentally misunderstands the economic factors driving storm damage costs.

According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), since 1980, there have been 403 billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States, with tropical cyclones causing over $1.5 trillion in total damage.

In 2024 alone, the U.S. experienced 27 billion-dollar disasters resulting in $182.7 billion in damages. Climate activists point to these numbers as evidence of worsening storms, but this analysis reveals a critical flaw in their methodology.

The $1 billion threshold used to classify “severe” storms is fixed and not adjusted for inflation beyond the basic Consumer Price Index.

According to NOAA’s Climate.gov, this flawed approach has resulted in 57 events since 1980 that were originally below the billion-dollar threshold but are now classified as billion-dollar disasters simply due to inflation.

This artificial inflation of severe storm counts creates the false impression that dangerous storms are becoming more frequent when, in reality, the monetary threshold has simply lost its meaning over time.

Inflation has turned million-dollar storms into billion-dollar ones. The effect is clear in historical comparisons. Hurricane Katrina caused $125 billion in damage in 2005—equivalent to $200 billion today, according to WCNC.

Hurricane Harvey’s $125 billion in 2017 would equal about $159 billion in 2024, a $33 billion jump in just seven years. Most striking is the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane, which cost $105 million at the time but would have caused $236 billion in 2018, per the Washington Post.

These examples show how inflation alone can make storms seem far more “severe” over time.

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