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The Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Database, which the Trump administration "retired" in May, has relaunched outside of the government using the same methodology. In its first update at the new site, the database shows that the first six months of 2025 have been the most expensive first six months of any year since 1980.
The database tracks the financial costs of property and other infrastructure destroyed by extreme weather disasters in the United States, focusing on events that caused $1 billion or more in damages. So far, 2025 has racked up $101.4 billion in such losses. The climate research nonprofit Climate Central now hosts the database and makes this information available to insurers, policy makers, broadcast meteorologists and ordinary citizens.
The database was rebuilt and will be maintained by its previous administrator Adam Smith, a former economist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency which used to host it. Smith found 14 billion-dollar disasters in the first half of this year, including the Los Angeles wildfires in January and a tornado outbreak across the central US in mid-March. More billion-dollar disasters are likely to be added to the list before 2025 is over.
Without the database, the public would have no easy way to track the cost of extreme weather events, many of which are becoming more common and severe because of climate change.
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📸 : Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
