Ask any emergency manager and they’ll tell you: a cascade of disasters is not the same as a single, isolated event. In 2025 the United States felt that difference in dollars, smoke and strain. New analysis from Climate Central shows 23 weather- and climate-related events that each caused at least $1 billion in damages, adding up to roughly $115 billion and 276 lives lost.
That $115 billion figure looks stark on its own. It looks even worse when you realize more than half of it — about $61.2 billion — came from a single January wildfire complex in Los Angeles, the costliest U.S. wildfire on record. Homes and neighborhoods were incinerated, hundreds of thousands evacuated, and smoke traveled for hundreds of miles. Public-health costs from inhaled smoke and long-term trauma aren’t fully captured in the dollar tally, and climate scientists warn the reported totals are conservative when you factor in those ripple effects.
A tightening tempo
The pattern isn’t new, but the tempo is. Since 1980, the average U.S. year saw nine billion-dollar disasters. The last decade has been a different drumbeat: roughly 20 such events per year. In the 1980s, the gap between billion-dollar disasters averaged 82 days; in 2025 it was about 10. That compression — a disaster every week and a half, on average — strains response systems, insurance markets and local budgets.
Severe storms dominated 2025: 21 of the 23 events were tornadoes, hail or damaging wind outbreaks. Spring and summer tornado outbreaks inflicted much of the human toll and economic damage, with one central U.S. outbreak in March causing 43 deaths and about $11 billion in losses. Climate scientists emphasize that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and energy, which changes how storms form and how much rain they can dump; for some 2025 events rapid analyses already show human-caused warming made extreme rainfall more likely and intense.
Why 2025 wasn’t even worse
A grim irony: 2025 could have cost far more. The Atlantic spawned several extraordinarily powerful hurricanes — including multiple Category 5 storms — but weather patterns steered the worst of them away from the U.S. mainland. Had a major hurricane made landfall, damages could easily have pushed the annual total well past $200 billion, experts say.
Still, that near-miss shouldn’t lull anyone into complacency. Ocean heat that fed those storms also underscores how climate change supercharges extremes even when the worst-case trajectories miss populated coasts.
Data matters — and it’s fragile
Tracking these disasters is not merely an accounting exercise; it’s the basis for planning, adaptation and accountability. In mid-2025, the federal program that had been maintaining the U.S. billion-dollar disaster database was shuttered, creating a gap that Climate Central moved to fill. As Adam Smith, who led the NOAA project for years and now leads the Climate Central update, put it: “The continuation of this dataset… is important because it helps demonstrate the economic impact of extreme weather and climate events.”
That point resonates beyond statistics. When agencies lose staff or programs, policymakers and communities have fewer reliable tools to evaluate risk, prioritize resilience investments or make insurance and land-use decisions. The episode is part of a broader debate over federal capacity to track and respond to a rapidly changing climate; that debate has real downstream costs for communities trying to rebuild after catastrophe. For background on how the government’s tracking role changed, see reporting on NOAA’s decision to stop maintaining the federal billion-dollar database.
Not just climate — choices amplify losses
Climate change is amplifying many hazards, but human choices make some events costlier. Expanding development into the wildland-urban interface means more homes sit where fire behavior is now more extreme; building in floodplains guarantees repeating losses when rivers and storms overflow. In short, warming loads the dice; human settlement patterns increase the stakes.
There’s also a technology angle. Better, faster data and analytics can sharpen early warnings and targeting of relief — but building and maintaining that capability requires investment. The intersection of large-scale data infrastructure and climate monitoring is growing; new computing and satellite projects will matter for both forecasting and resilience planning. For one ambitious example of large-scale tech infrastructure, see how space-based data center concepts are being pitched in the tech sector as Project Suncatcher.
What communities face now
Short-term: more frequent and compounding disasters mean first responders and utilities are pulled in rapid succession, leaving less time and money to rebuild stronger. For homeowners and renters, insurance markets are fraying in places with recurring losses. For public-health systems, repeated smoke events and flooding create chronic burdens.
Longer term: communities must decide whether to double down on defending vulnerable places, retreat where risks are untenable, or redesign infrastructure and land use to accommodate a different climate reality.
2025’s ledger is a blunt reminder that weather extremes are now a recurring national expense, not a rare calamity. The numbers are a map of exposures and choices: where we build, what we burn, and how much we invest in tools to see a storm coming. Climate Central’s refreshed database offers one practical step toward clearer information; what follows depends on whether policymakers and communities use that information to change course.