Every natural disaster presents a bill when it's done. Hurricane Katrina , which inundated the Gulf States in 2005, did $201.3 billion worth of damage. Superstorm Sandy , which hit the northeast in 2012, cost $71 billion . The drought and heat wave that seared 22 midwestern and western states in 2012 set the U.S. back $41.7 billion.

Since 1980, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has maintained a database tracking these bank-busting events, logging every drought, flood, freeze, severe storm, tropical cyclone, wildfire, or winter storm that had a price tag of $1 billion or more. In that time it has tallied 403 such events, totaling more than $2.9 trillion and claiming nearly 17,000 lives . The billion-dollar database is more than just a catalogue of

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