Nature is pummeling the United States this year with extremes.
Unprecedented triple-digit heat and devastating drought. Deadly tornadoes leveling towns. Rivers overflowing. A billion-dollar blizzard. And now, unusual hurricane-caused flooding in Vermont.
If what’s falling from the sky isn’t enough, the ground shook in places that normally seem stable: Colorado and the East Coast. On Friday, a strong quake triggered brief tsunami warnings in Alaska.
Arizona and New Mexico have broken records for wildfires.
Total weather losses top $35 billion, and that’s not counting Hurricane Irene, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There have been more than 700 U.S. disaster and weather deaths, most from the tornado outbreaks this spring.
Last year, the world seemed to go wild with natural disasters in the deadliest year in a generation. But 2010 was bad globally, and the United States mostly was spared.
This year, while there have been devastating events elsewhere, such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Australia’s flooding and a drought in Africa, it’s our turn to get smacked. Repeatedly.
“I’m hoping for a break. I’m tired of working this hard. This is ridiculous,” said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who runs Weather Underground, a meteorology service that tracks strange and extreme weather. “I’m not used to seeing all these extremes all at once in one year.”
The U.S. has had a record 10 weather catastrophes costing more than a billion dollars: five tornado outbreaks, two major river floods in the Upper Midwest and the Mississippi River, drought in the Southwest and a blizzard that crippled the Midwest and Northeast, and Irene.
What’s happening, say experts, is mostly random chance or bad luck. But there is something more to it, many of them say. Man-made global warming is increasing the odds of getting a bad roll of the dice.
Sometimes the luck seemed downright freakish.
The East Coast got a double whammy in one week with a magnitude-5.8 earthquake followed by a drenching from Irene. If one place felt more besieged than others, it was tiny Mineral, Va., the epicenter of the quake, where Louisa County fire Lt. Floyd Richard stared at the darkening sky before Irene and said, “What did we do to Mother Nature to come through here like this.”
There are still four months to go, including September, the busiest month of the hurricane season. The Gulf Coast expected a soaking this weekend from Tropical Storm Lee, and forecasters were watching Katia, which may regain hurricane strength, slogging west in the Atlantic.
The insurance company Munich Re calculated that in the first six months of the year, there were 98 natural disasters in the United States, about double the average of the 1990s.
Even before Irene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was on pace to obliterate the record for declared disasters issued by state, reflecting both the geographic breadth and frequency of America’s problem-plagued year.
“If you weren’t in a drought, you were drowning is what it came down to,” Masters said.
$1 billion-plus disasters
Ten weather disasters in the U.S. this year have caused at least $1 billion in damage:
• Hurricane Irene, Aug. 20-29. Damage and deaths are still being tallied, but estimates run to more than $7 billion and close to 50 deaths from Vermont to North Carolina.
• Upper Midwest flooding, much of the summer. Damage: $2 billion.
• Mississippi River flooding, spring and summer. Damage neared $4 billion.
• Drought and heat wave continues in Texas, Oklahoma and neighboring states. Damage has passed the $5 billion mark.
• Tornadoes in the Midwest and Southeast, May 22-27. The toll: 177 dead, more than $7 billion in losses. One tornado killed more than 140 people in Joplin, Mo.
• Tornadoes in the Ohio Valley, Southeast and Midwest, April 25-30, devastating the city of Tuscaloosa, Ala. Toll: 32 deaths and more than $9 billion in damage.
• Tornadoes from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania, April 14-16. Toll: $2 billion in damage and 38 deaths, mostly in North Carolina.
• 59 tornadoes in Midwest and Northeast, April 8-11. Damage: $2.2 billion.
• 46 tornadoes in central and Southern states, April 4-5. Toll: Nine deaths and $2.3 billion in damage.
• Blizzard from late January until after Feb. 2, paralyzed cities from Chicago to the Northeast. Toll: 36 deaths and more than $2 billion in damage.
The Associated Press
