At least $25 billion natural disasters unfolded across the United States this year.
Wildfires and hurricanes were relentless and especially punishing, setting records for the amount of real estate impacted in the Lower 48, while killing dozens. Supercharged by human-caused climate change, they signaled trouble for the future as the climate warms further. A year filled with extreme weather meant a hefty price tag: Insurance firm Aon estimates that at least $25 billion weather disasters unfolded across the United States this year. “The United States has endured one of its costliest years for weather disasters on record and is facing an economic toll that will exceed $100 billion,” wrote Steven Bowen, head of catastrophe insight at Aon, in an email. Fueled by record heat and parched vegetation, fanned by howling winds and, at times, sparked by blitzes of lightning, the West was plagued by an onslaught of devastating wildfires that began in June and continued into December. The fires occurred in a region that is trending hotter, drier and more susceptible to large blazes due to climate change. In California, which saw a record wildfire season, a study published in August showed the frequency of fall days with extreme fire-weather conditions has already more than doubled since the 1980s. In early September, when fires exploded not only in California but also Oregon and Washington, Nick Nauslar, a meteorologist at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said the eruption surpassed anything in the modern record. “Multiple fires made 20+ mile runs in 24-hours over the last few days in California, Oregon, and Washington,” he said in an email. “Most of these fires are making massive runs in timber and burning tens of thousands of acres and in some cases 100,000+ acres in one day. The shear amount of fire on the landscape is surreal, and no one I have talked to can remember anything like it.” In mid-September, the smoke from these blazes led to hazardous levels of air pollution all along the West Coast and covered almost the entirety of the Lower 48 even reaching D.C. Colorado also experienced record wildfire activity this fall that was only finally quelled when snow arrived. The 2020 wildfire season in California was off the charts in terms of area burned.4.2 million acres were torched in blazes in just the Golden State alone. That’s an area of land larger than the state of Connecticut, and twice as extensive as what burned in California’s previous worst fire season. Thirty-one people died in California wildfires, which damaged or destroyed more than 10,000 structures. Five of the top six largest wildfires in the state all occurred in 2020. The first big eruption of fires came in mid-August as a record-breaking heat dome smothered the Southwest. Death Valley soared to 130 degrees, potentially the Earth’s highest temperature since at least 1931. The fires that erupted in Southern California exhibited extreme fire behavior, spreading at breakneck speed. Some of the smoke plumes towered more than 50,000 feet high, taking on thunderstorm characteristics. A family of virtually unheard of fire tornadoes – actual tornadoes made out of smoke and borne of fire – descended from roiling smoke clouds in Lassen County, Calif., on Aug.15. The Creek Fire in the southern Sierra Nevada in September spun up additional tornadoes. Another rash of blazes broke out Labor Day weekend, in the central and northern part of the state, including over parts of its famed wine country in Napa and Sonoma counties. By mid-September, San Francisco was bathed in an eerie, apocalyptic amber hue beneath dense plumes of smoke pooling over the Bay Area which took weeks to fully disperse. The fire season in California extended into December when the Weather Service office in San Francisco issued a red-flag warning for the possibility of extreme fire behavior for one of only a few instances on a record so late in the year. Wildfire disaster struck the Pacific Northwest in September amid howling, dry winds. In Washington state, fires charred 600,000 acres, the largest burned area since 2015. In Oregon, blazes consumed more than a million acre and burned down 4,009 homes, according to the Statesman Journal. At one point, more than 10 percent of the state’s population was under an evacuation warning or order. Colorado saw its three largest fires on record in 2020. First came the Pine Gulch fire in late July north of Grand Junction, which scorched nearly 140,000 acres. The Cameron Peak Blaze, which began in August west of Fort Collins, was the largest of the three, burning 208,000 acres over four months.
