New York Fed Is Mapping Disaster Damage as Government Pulls Back

An aerial view of the damage from Hurricane Helene in Bat Cave, N.C., in October. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a new tool to map the effects of natural disasters, even as federal agencies pull back on research about those events’ economic impact.

The New York Fed launched a new data set and interactive map that tracks damage, injuries, and fatalities stemming from U.S. natural disasters on a county level. The data, which will be updated twice annually, currently cover the period from January 1996 to December 2023. The system is meant to help policymakers understand local economic conditions following natural disasters.

The new mapping tool and data come as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said it expects the current Atlantic hurricane season to generate “above-normal” activity. At the same time, the agency has announced a series of steps that will limit the availability of weather tracking and analysis in the wake of federal budget cuts and a deprioritization of climate research.

NOAA said last week that it would no longer have access to satellite data used to track hurricane movements in the Atlantic. It said in May that it was retiring a database that tracks billion-dollar natural disasters. Since President Donald Trump took office, the authors of a forthcoming, comprehensive climate-risk report have been dismissed. The administration has proposed dramatic cuts to NOAA’s budget, including the elimination of the National Severe Storms Laboratory, under Trump’s tax-and-spending bill.

Last year, NOAA found, the U.S. experienced 27 natural disasters that inflicted at least $1 billion in damages, only one fewer than the record-setting 28 events analyzed in 2023. The cost of last year’s disasters was approximately $182.7 billion, NOAA calculated.

The New York Fed staff’s initial analysis finds that Florida and the Southeast region of the U.S., as well as parts of the East Coast, have suffered the most from floods, hurricanes, and coastal disasters. The western part of the U.S. has been affected the most by wildfires during the past 27 years.

Hurricanes and tropical storms have caused average per capita damage of $1,240, according to New York Fed research. That makes them one of the most damaging forms of natural disasters after droughts, which cause $1,493 in per capita damages. All of those incidents, plus coastal flooding, affected fewer than 5% of counties on an annual basis from 1996 to 2023.

In comparison, winds and floods affected more than 37% of counties on an annual basis, but only caused average per capita damages of $23 and $153, respectively, the NY Fed staff found.

But that trend is shifting as hurricanes, tropical storms, floods, and coastal disasters have become increasingly damaging in recent years due to real-estate trends, population growth in coastal areas, and stronger, more frequent storm systems. Inflation-adjusted damage from hurricane and tropical storms has more than tripled in the past 10 years, rising from a per capita average of $573 from 1996 to 2004 to $1,727 in the 2014-2023 period.

Damage from coastal disasters has increased approximately tenfold during the same period, and damage from floods have nearly doubled. Drought and wildfire damage, however, have fallen by 79% and 43%, respectively, the staff reported.

The New York Fed said Tuesday that the new data set and map fit into the bank’s mission by gauging the impact of localized events on activity and regional economies, including natural disasters. “Despite the economic significance of natural disasters—flowing often from their human toll—there are currently no publicly available data on the damages they cause in the United States at the county level,” staff said in a post regarding the launch.

Write to Megan Leonhardt at megan.leonhardt@barrons.com