Ferocious wildfires that consumed entire California neighborhoods. Devastating hurricanes that inundated communities from Florida to North Carolina. Brutal hailstorms in Colorado and Texas. Tornadoes across the Midwest and South. A record deluge in Hawaii. Those catastrophes and others were among the 14 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters to hit the United States during 2018, according to data released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Extreme weather cost the US $306 billion in 2017 and $91 billion in 2018, according to the federal government. "If we really continue to sustain costs like this going forward, many elements of the way we’ve managed resources in society are just not financially sustainable,” said Lab co-director Sol Hsiang of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. This story also cites a 2014 analysis by our partners at Rhodium Group projecting increased coastal storm damage in the 2030s if climate change continues unabated.