Sandy, drought among billion-dollar disasters in U.S. this year

The United States saw 11 disasters that each cost over a billion dollars in losses this year, preliminary information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suggests.

Of those events, seven were severe weather or tornado events, and two were related to hurricanes/post tropical cyclones. The remaining two were the year-long drought and associated wildfires, according to the NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), which keeps records on weather and climate-related losses.

View the NOAA’s list of events here: Billion-Dollar Weather/Climate Disasters

Economic losses for “superstorm” Sandy and the drought are the big drivers this year in terms of costs and are still being calculated, NOAA noted. It will take months to develop a final reliable estimate for each.

“Given how big these events are likely to be, NCDC estimates that 2012 will surpass 2011 ($60.6 billion, CPI-adjusted to 2012 dollars) in terms of aggregate costs for annual billion-dollar disasters, even with less number of disasters,” the organization said.

The greatest annual loss was 2005 ($187.2 billion, CPI-adjusted to 2012 dollars), it added.

The NOAA’s estimates are periodically updated and its sources include the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture, other U.S. government agencies, individual state emergency management agencies, state and regional climate centers, media reports, and insurance industry estimates.