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posted by chromas on Thursday April 12 2018, @05:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the winters-too dept.

The Center for American Progress reports

This year has been "anything but ordinary" according to the latest data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In the first three months of 2018, the United States has seen three climate and weather disasters each resulting in more than $1 billion in damages.

Two of the four nor'easters to hit the central and eastern U.S. during a one month period resulted in record snowfall and more than a billion dollars in losses each. Millions were without power and hundreds of flights were grounded. Multiple deaths were reported across Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia.

In mid-March, a deadly storm also hit the Gulf Coast with reports of dangerous winds, hail, and tornadoes. At least three people died and 20 tornadoes were reported in Alabama.

"It has been quite some time since the U.S. has experienced multiple, billion-dollar winter storm events", said Adam Smith, the NOAA scientist who compiled the data.

All told, the January to March period of the past three years has had the highest frequency of billion-dollar disasters on record since 1980--with 2018 surpassed only by 2016 and 2017.

As Smith told ThinkProgress via email, not only is the number of billion-dollar winter storms experienced in the past few years increasing, but the cost of these winter storms are increasingly above average compared to the 1990s, when a series of damaging storms--including a 1997-98 ice storm that hit the northeast--crippled parts of the country.

[...] Like with summertime hurricanes, winter nor'easters start in the ocean. And with warmer waters, these storms become more intense. According to Accuweather, this year's series of devastating nor'easters spent more time forming over the ocean, giving them a chance to increase in strength by absorbing more of the warmer ocean temperatures.

Additionally, with higher sea levels come more devastating storm surges. Massachusetts, for example, was repeatedly hit with coastal flooding during this year's winter storms.

Related: Climate change dials down Atlantic Ocean heating system


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:30PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:30PM (#666163)

    You could be a little more open-minded. There is an effect associated with economic growth that slants the results, as mentioned below. When GDP grows (which it does in CPI adjusted dollars) there is that much more stuff to get damaged. If there was a town with 100 houses that got damaged in 1990, today there are 200 houses and the damage is twice as large. Or maybe the houses are twice as fancy, but no more robust. You will get twice the economic damage from a storm, even if the climate is exactly unchanged.

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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:39PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:39PM (#666167)

    Wow!!! I bet they didn't even think of that! What an amazingly simple point that completely changes everything.

    The Earth will be OK, everything is just naaatural maaaan.

    Go fly a kite, at least your hand waving will be doing something useful.

    • (Score: 2, Troll) by khallow on Friday April 13 2018, @12:09AM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 13 2018, @12:09AM (#666254) Journal

      I bet they didn't even think of that!

      They probably didn't since it's climate change alarmism.

      It's more than just inflation though. From January, 1998 to December, 2017, the valuation of US homes [tableau.com] (which is a significant part, but not all real estate in the US) increased from $14 trillion to almost $32 trillion. That is a more than doubling in dollar amount of the stuff that can break in an extreme weather event. Only part of that is going to be due to inflation.

      Now, toss in that a bunch of that new construction during that time is probably in areas, like flood plains, that are more susceptible to flooding and other extreme weather events, and we can explain most, if not all, of the increase in extreme weather damage just from the increased cost of the stuff that gets damaged in such events.

      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday April 13 2018, @03:11AM

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Friday April 13 2018, @03:11AM (#666314) Homepage Journal

        Since I took office, our economy has been coming on like Gang Busters! Especially since we did the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act. Unemployment (black & white & Hispanic), stock Market, Bitcoin, real estate -- all doing TREMENDOUSLY!!!

        People don't know this, in August I signed a terrific Executive Order, I call it the One Federal Decision Policy. It lets us fix our badly broken infrastructure -- our roads, bridges & pipelines -- VERY QUICKLY. They built a highway, it took 17 years. We will bring it down to less than 2 years. I repealed a VERY DUMB rule, the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard -- another horrible Obama number. He said, "oh, let's do endless studies about floods." Big waste of time. We're going to be much smarter and much, much faster. We'll build the infrastructure we need. Where we need it. And if a flood washes it away, we'll build it again. All in less time than those dumb studies would take!!!