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Earth Wise
Earth Wise

Untracked disasters are still disasters

By Randy Simon
Published November 11, 2025 at 1:00 AM EST
Chris Yunker
/
Flickr

The Trump administration decided this year to stop updating a federal database that tracked the cost of extreme weather, compiling an annual list of hurricanes, wildfires, and other disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage. The government had maintained that database since the 1990s, with data going back to 1980. Evidently, this information was deemed to be unimportant, or at least inconvenient.

The nonprofit group Climate Central has revived the database and the scientist who is in charge of it there is the person who managed the federal database for 15 years from his position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Climate Central released a report in mid-October revealing that through the first six months of this year, disasters across the United States caused more than $100 billion in damage, the most expensive year on record. Fourteen disasters each caused at least $1 billion in damage through the first half of the year. More than half of the costs incurred from extreme weather so far this year are related to the wildfires that tore through Los Angeles in January. These fires nearly doubled the all-time record for fire damage, adjusted for inflation.

The disaster database is used by the insurance industry, policymakers, and researchers to help understand and plan for a future in which storms, floods, fires, and other hazards will continue to be more frequent, intense, and damaging. It is a powerful tool for communicating these trends to the public. The current administration clearly sees this as something to avoid.

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Earth Wise Climate ChangeEnvironmentNatural DisasterExtreme WeatherClimate Central
Randy Simon
Randy Simon has over 30 years of experience in renewable energy technology, materials research, superconductor applications, and a variety of other technical and management areas. He has been an officer of a publicly-traded Silicon Valley company, worked in government laboratories, the aerospace industry, and at university research institutions. He holds a PhD in physics from UCLA. Dr. Simon has authored numerous technical papers, magazine articles, energy policy documents, online articles and blogs, and a book, and holds seven patents. He also composes, arranges and produces jazz music
See stories by Randy Simon
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