Forbes – What Does Climate Preparedness Look Like?

In the early hours of August 30, 2023, Hurricane Idalia made its first landfall in the Big Bend region of western Florida. Over the following 48 hours, the Category 3 storm ravaged Florida’s Gulf Coast and Georgia’s southern border before eventually moving up into the Carolinas. Winds that reached around 125 miles per hour devastated local homes, businesses, vehicles and everything else in its path as it tore through the region.

Hurricane Idalia was the strongest storm to hit the region in more than 125 years, leaving an estimated $20 billion in damages in its wake.

Yet Idalia’s projected financial impact is a fraction of Hurricane Ian’s nearly $60 billion in damages from 2022 and is just the most recent of 23 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2023. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2023 set a new record for billion-dollar disasters in a single year in just eight months.

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