Climate and Weather Disasters Cost U.S. a Record $306 Billion in 2017

Hurricane Harvey's extreme rainfall and the most devastating wildfire season on record contributed to $306 billion in damages from climate and weather disasters in the United States in 2017, shattering the previous record by more than $90 billion, according to a federal report released Monday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's recap of the nation's climate over the past year found that 2017 was the third-warmest on record. What's more, it was warmer than average in every state across the lower 48 and Alaska for the third consecutive year. "That's pretty unusual," said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA and the lead author of the report. Such a stretch hasn't occurred in many decades, he said, and is a sign of the degree to which the climate is warming. "The contiguous United States is a pretty big place, and there are features of the climate system that usually make some places colder."While 2017 was not the hottest year, each of the five warmest years since record-keeping began in 1895 have come since 2006. The average annual temperature in the contiguous U.S. last year was 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th Century average, and five states registered their warmest years on record: Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, North Carolina and South Carolina.