Weather Costs By State |
 Dave Thurlow, Host |
Where does your state rank in terms of damage from tornadoes per year? How about from floods or hurricanes? Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research or NCAR, recently launched a website that puts all of this information in perspective. The website is called the Extreme Weather Sourcebook and it provides quick access to data on the cost of damages from hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes in the United States.
When you go to the site, you'll see that the data for hurricane impacts goes back to 1925, back to 1960 for tornadoes and to 1983 for floods. But what makes this site unique is that it reports this damage information in constant 1997 dollars, simplifying comparisons among the different weather events and among states or regions.
So which states tops the list? For tornadoes, Texas has an average yearly cost of over $40 million. Iowa leads the list for flooding damage, while Florida has the highest yearly hurricane damage. Florida also has the highest yearly damage from all three disasters combined with an average of $3.6 billion of damage per year.
Of course you shouldn't predict the weather with this information, but you can predict what the potential damage can be when severe weather systems and complex social systems are in the same place at the wrong time.
You can see where your state ranks on the Extreme Weather Sourcebook page through a link at our website, which is mountwashington.org. Our show's Series Senior Editor is Jay Allison and Weather Notebook music is composed and performed by Georg Brandl. Thanks to Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive and to the National Science Foundation.