After 23 Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters Cost $115B and 276 Deaths in 2025, Experts Warn About 2026

Throughout 2025, America was rocked by a staggering number of weather-related disasters that caused severe consequences. Based on recent reporting, it has been clear that 2025's natural disasters in America caused far too many deaths and a staggering amount of financial costs.

It is important to realize how much damage severe weather conditions caused in America in 2025. However, the biggest takeaway has to be that experts are warning about how weather disasters will likely affect America throughout the remainder of 2026 and in future years.

23 Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters in 2025 Killed 276 and Caused $115B in U.S. Damage

On January 8th, 2026, Time published an article that revealed how severe weather conditions affected America in 2025. That article's findings were based on a report from climatecentral.org, a nonprofit organization that studies the impacts of climate change on the public. That article revealed that in 2025, 23 weather disasters caused over a billion dollars of damage each. Those events included wildfires and severe storms, the latter of which can involve things like tornadoes and powerful winds that cause extreme damage.

In addition to revealing the number of highly costly severe storms that affected America in 2025, Time's article also gave a more macro picture of the human and financial costs of those events. Those 23 events reportedly caused 276 deaths and a combined $115 billion in damages.

Time's article also underlined a fascinating factor in the report on 2025's severe storm damage. According to the aforementioned report, 2025 was a quiet year for hurricanes in America. In fact, there weren't any major hurricanes that made landfall in America in 2025. While that is worth celebrating, that also is a sobering fact because the aforementioned number of deaths and financial costs almost certainly could have been much worse if any major hurricanes had made landfall.

Experts Warn 2026 Could Bring More Deadly Storms After 2025’s Costly Disasters

For the aforementioned article about the effect of 2025's weather disaster damages, Time spoke to Adam Smith. The outlet described Smith as Climate Central's senior climate impact scientist and a former lead scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). While speaking to the outlet, Smith explained that costly weather event frequency appears to be on the rise and spoke about what that means for 2026 and the future.

“2025, is the 15th year in a row that there's been an above-average number of these billion-dollar disasters. So we're on this elevated long-term trend, and within that last 15 years, the last 10 have really been on another level as far as the frequency and intensity of these impacts in all parts of the nation. So this information is increasingly important, as we plan for and try to live in the future.”

Similarly, a September 2025 Amwins State of the Market report on the forecasted state of the insurance business in 2026 raised similar concerns. That report detailed how many billion-dollar storm events there had already been in 2025 by September and stated that those instances cost 31% more than similar events from the previous decade. Most importantly, the insurance report stated that increasingly common severe storms that are highly expensive severe weather events have become the "new normal" heading into 2026.

The aforementioned Time article also quoted Smith explaining the cause of the highly costly, financially and in terms of deaths, storms that have been affecting America and likely will continue to. “Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of some types of extreme [weather] events, leading to more damages, and that, combined with growing our built environment in harm's way, is what amplifies the total damage in terms of the frequency and cost of these impacts.”