Weather-related fatalities in the United States

Select (US) annual weather-related deaths

	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
Floods	118	136	68	38	49	49
Lightning strikes	42	44	46	51	44	51
Tornadoes	68	130	94	43	40	55
Temperature extremes	123	182	509	170	170	178
Hurricanes	1	9	17	0	24	53
Snow/Ice	89	76	66	57	33	33
These data were tabulated from data from the National Climatic Data Center.

This table represents a 6-year period and only a select type of recorded weather events. The data was tabulated from the NCDC website by running searches on the specified weather events recorded with at least 1 fatality. The yearly timeframes were selected to cover January 1 to December 31 of each year for each event type. This table does not provide a comprehensive total of all weather-related events. Also, this is not necessarily a weather event severity comparison, but is more of an indicator of frequency of fatal occurrences for some events. However, the unexpected leader of fatalities comes from the temperature extremes category. That category includes heat waves as well as cold extremes.

References

• http://www.weather.gov/om/hazstats/images/70-years.pdf