
Data Shows Natural Disasters Occur More Frequently and Cause More Damage
Deadly and costly natural disasters punctuated 2024 beginning with an Arctic-propelled winter storm in the Pacific Northwest in January and ending with powerful back-to-back hurricanes on the Eastern seaboard. Destructive wildfires in Southern California erupted just as 2025 started.
Rising numbers of major disasters suggests that improved disaster management is becoming as important as attempts to arrest climate change.
In 2024, the hottest year on record, the United States suffered 24 major disasters, affecting all parts of the country. Damage estimates for disasters between January and November exceeded $61 billion. Hurricanes Helene (Category 4) and Milton (Category 3) upped that loss total by a whopping $100 billion. There were 28 U.S. natural disasters in 2023, with damage estimates totaling $93 billion.
Major Disasters More Frequent
According to Climate Central, an independent nonprofit of scientists who monitor climate science, sea level rise and extreme weather, “The average length of time between U.S. billion-dollar disasters has plummeted from 82 days in the 1980s to 15 days in recent years (2020-2024).” Hurricanes Milton and Helene struck just 13 days apart.
“Hurricanes Beryl, Helene and Milton all underwent rapid intensification, defined as an increase in wind speeds up to 35 mph in 24 hours,” reported Climate Central, which attributes ocean warming for causing rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones.
“Of this year’s 24 billion-dollar disasters, 17 were severe storms defined as thunderstorms that produce tornadoes, damaging winds (58 mph or higher) and/or large hail,” Climate Central says.
The group provided a calendar summary of disasters. “January saw a tornado outbreak across the South. The Midwest experienced significant tornado outbreaks in February and March. Ten separate severe billion-dollar storms occurred in April and May, including major tornado outbreaks across the South and Midwest. In June and July, three billion-dollar severe storm events occurred in the upper Midwest and Northeast, including a record-breaking tornado outbreak in the Chicago area and Rhode Island’s first ever June tornado.”
Climate Central noted fire weather seasons have grown longer and more intense, exacerbated by warmer temperatures and severe drought. It also says winter storms are more likely to produce multi-day cold spells and high winds because of changes in the polar vortex.
Disasters Not Just in America
The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events has increased worldwide. There were 100 natural disasters per year in the 1970s compared to 400 per year in the last two decades.
Global sea-rise levels rose 2.5 times faster between 2006 and 2016 than for most of the 20th century.
More than 20 million people worldwide are being forced to move every year because of climate-related issues.
Managing Risk of Natural Disasters
The World Wildlife Fund says we’ve reached the point where addressing climate change isn’t enough. We need to gear up for disaster management.

Image Credit: WWF-©-Theodore-Kaye
“Environmentally responsible disaster management can’t come fast enough,” WWF says. “As the climate crisis intensifies extreme weather events worldwide, the coming years are a critical time to get disaster risk reduction right. Communities must adapt and reduce disaster risk now. Lives depend on it, and nature can help.”
“As the climate crisis worsens, it is important to adapt how we manage risk and respond to extreme events,” WWF explains. “Natural hazards are deeply intertwined, and if managed separately, can feed off of each other to drive more extreme damage. That’s because the climate crisis acts as a threat multiplier. A drought may parch vegetation, increasing the amount of tinder available to spark a wildfire, which incinerates a forested area, releasing CO2 and further increasing the climate crisis in a negative feedback loop. When rainfall events occur, which climate change is making increasingly intense, the lack of plants may mean that water shifts more of the soil, leading to landslides and destructive flooding.”
The bottom line: “To save as many lives as possible, it’s important to account for the impacts of more than one extreme event at a time.”
It’s one thing to disbelieve in human-caused climate change and another to be blind to climate change occurring all around us. Don’t let beliefs or ideology get in the way of pragmatism.
“Here’s the thing,” WWF says, “a natural hazard, such as a flood or wildfire, does not have to become a disaster. By proactively taking measures to reduce the risk posed by hazards, the impacts can be managed while strengthening resilience.”
WWF is seeking to integrate “environmentally responsible practices into disaster response, recovery, reconstruction and risk reduction programs and policies.”
California Wildfire Case in Point
The Pacific Palisades wildfire provides a case study of the importance of disaster management. Local and regional officials have been criticized for not being better prepared for the prospect of multiple wildfires propelled by fierce Santa Ana winds. Fire hydrants failed and a key link to a reservoir wasn’t reactivated quickly enough. There also were budget cuts.
The Washington Post reported over the weekend another troubling problem: the Palisades fire may have reignited at the site of an earlier fire that had been extinguished. A Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman told The Post it wasn’t the department’s practice to maintain patrols of past fire sites, even for a few days after fires have gone cold.
“We know that fires rekindle and transition from smoldering to flaming,” Michael Gollner, a mechanical engineering professor and fire scientist at the University of California at Berkeley who reviewed The Post’s materials. “It’s certainly possible that something from that previous fire, within a week, had rekindled and caused the ignition” of an even larger fire.
The original fire on New Year’s Day may have been caused by fireworks the night before, according to local residents interviewed by The Post.