ENG101: College Writing (Geary): Major Weather Events

From 1950 to 2022, the cyclone Bhola that hit Bangladesh in 1970 was the deadliest natural disaster in the world. The exact death toll is impossible to calculate, but it is estimated that over 300,000 lives were lost as a result of the cyclone.

Between 1980 and 2024, 66 Tropical Cyclone, 203 Severe Storm, 23 Wildfire, 24 Winter Storm, 44 Flooding, 31 Drought, and 9 Freeze billion-dollar disaster events affected the United States (CPI-adjusted).

While this is not a comprehensive list, it provides summaries of some of the more interesting and important weather events to impact our local area in the past.

The National Weather Service in Dodge City has come up with a list of the 25 top historical weather events in our county warning area since 1874. This list was compiled over the summer. There were a few difficult choices on what to include and what to exclude. The ones that were excluded are listed in the honorable mention section. In addition, it was very difficult to list the top events from one through twenty-five. We decided to list the events in chronological order.

Hurricanes are responsible for the greatest number of deadly U.S. weather events of the past 50 years, claiming nine of the top thirty spots, if we look at weather events lasting a month or less. By this definition, winter storms and their associated severe weather and flooding had the second highest number of deadly events (seven), followed tornado outbreaks (five), then floods and heat waves (four each). One wildfire made the list, the 2018 Camp Fire in California.