U.S. suffered $115 billion in damages from 23 billion-dollar disasters in 2025

Time reports that the U.S. experienced the third-highest year on record for billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2025, according to data from Climate Central. Climate Central counted 23 such events in 2025, causing 276 fatalities and $115 billion in damages. The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles last January had the highest toll and were the costliest wildfires on record, with over $61 billion in losses, twice the damage of the 2018 wildfire season.

Severe weather — from a Northeast derecho in April to a string of tornado outbreaks in spring and summer — made up 91% of the billion-dollar disasters; “The total cost of all these severe storm events, as a subset of the entire year, was about $51 billion which is one of the highest on record for that hazard type,” said Adam Smith, senior climate impact scientist at Climate Central.

The U.S. also saw a quiet hurricane year on landfall, despite three Category Five hurricanes forming over the Atlantic, “which is only the second time that's happened on record,” Smith said. NOAA began tracking billion-dollar disasters in 1980; since then the U.S. has sustained 426 such events with a total cost exceeding $3.1 trillion.

Key Topics

Science, Climate Central, Noaa, Los Angeles Wildfires, Billion Dollar Disasters, Atlantic Hurricanes