In the U.S., we’ve always had floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires. What’s new is how many people now live in the paths of those risks. Cheap housing, job growth, and lifestyle have pulled people into places that once were left alone. I get it. But the storms still come.
It’s very possible, even likely, that the rising cost of storm damage isn’t just about stronger storms. It’s about what we’ve built in their way. Since 1980, the U.S. has seen nearly 400 billion-dollar disasters. Climate change grabs the headlines, but many experts agree the real cost driver is us.
We’ve packed more homes, businesses, and infrastructure into risky zones. Florida is a good example. The fifteen counties hit by Hurricane Milton grew from 3.7 million people in 1980 to over 9.1 million in 2023. Their economic output more than quadrupled.
The same story plays out with wildfires. From 1990 to 2020, homes in fire-prone areas rose by 47 percent. That is not just bad planning. It is stacking kindling.
Look at Hurricane Helene. Damages reached $250 billion. Not just because it was strong, but because there was more to destroy. Our choices, more than the climate, drove the cost.
California shows it too. In early 2025, the Palisades Fire tore through Los Angeles, destroying more than 16,000 structures and forcing 200,000 people to evacuate. Estimated losses hit $275 billion. That may be the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. Again, it was not just the fire. It was what we built in its path.
North Carolina tells the same story. When Helene stalled over the mountains in 2024, record rainfall overwhelmed rivers and flooded towns like Asheville, built in the floodplain.
Now the Midwest is getting hit. Over Easter weekend, a slow-moving storm dropped tornadoes, hail, and flooding rains across Oklahoma and Texas. It used to be trailer parks and shanties that took the worst of it. Now it is McMansions and standard suburbs built in places that probably should never have been neighborhoods.
Since 1980, the U.S. population has grown from 227 million to more than 344 million. That is a 50 percent jump. Much of that growth has been in high-risk zones: coastal counties, floodplains, and fire-prone hills.
Today, nearly 40 percent of Americans live near the coast. The number of people in high fire hazard zones grew from one million in 1990 to 2.6 million by 2010. In 2023, high-risk metro areas grew 35 percent faster than low-risk ones. As more people move into vulnerable places, the cost of storms keeps climbing.
Unless we rethink where and how we build, the financial toll will only rise.
It is easy to blame climate change for expensive storms. But the truth is more complicated. It is both nature and human choice. And if we are honest, the largest factor is not temperature. It is us.