Billion Dollar Weather Disasters: New Record

Weather Disasters

From Jeff Masters at  Wunderblog: [For some amazing photos, click the link and scroll down…]

Earth set a new record for billion-dollar weather disasters in 2013 with 41, said insurance broker Aon Benfield in their Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe Report issued this week. Despite the record number of billion-dollar disasters, weather-related natural disaster losses (excluding earthquakes) were only slightly above average in 2013, and well below what occurred in 2012. That’s because 2013 lacked a U.S. mega-disaster like Hurricane Sandy ($65 billion in damage) or the 2012 drought ($30 billion in damage.) The most expensive global disaster of 2013 was the June flood in Central Europe, which cost $22 billion. The deadliest disaster was Super Typhoon Haiyan, which killed about 8,000 people in the Philippines. Four countries set records for most expensive weather-related disaster in their history, as tabulated by EM-DAT, the International Disaster Database, and adjusted for inflation:

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And 2014 is starting out with more of the same:

At least 13 people are dead and over 40,000 forced from their homes after torrential rains, which first started Tuesday, caused flooding and landslides in northern Indonesia.

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