USA Expenditures on Extreme Weather Events

The USA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has published a list of all of the extreme weather events that have occurred within the past three decades or so that the US government has spent more than $1 billion USD in damages on (adjusted to the 2011 dollar). While conclusions should not be reached based on such crude data, the simple numbers can be interesting to observe. For example, from 2006-present there have been over 40 extreme weather events that have necessitated over $1 billion in damages. Between 1995 and 1990, there were 19 such events, and between 1985 and 1980, there were 8. The complete data can be found at: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/billionz.html.