18 extreme weather events caused $165 billion in damage last year, NOAA says
CBSN
Costly weather disasters kept raining down on America last year, pounding the nation with 18 climate extremes that caused at least $1 billion in damage each, totaling more than $165 billion, federal climate scientists calculated Tuesday.
Even though 2022 wasn't near record hot for the United States, it was the third wildest year nationally both in number of extremes that cost $1 billion and overall damage from those weather catastrophes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report issued at the American Meteorological Society's conference.
The amount, cost and death toll of billion-dollar weather disasters make up a key measurement, adjusted for inflation, that NOAA uses to see how bad human-caused climate change is getting. They led to at least 474 deaths.
As vaccination rates decline, widespread outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio could reemerge
Health officials in western Texas are trying to contain a measles outbreak among mostly school-aged children, with at least 15 confirmed cases. It's the latest outbreak of a disease that had been virtually eliminated in the U.S., and it comes as vaccination rates are declining — jeopardizing the country's herd immunity from widespread outbreaks.