Energy & Environment — Disasters displaced 3 million Americans last year

by Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk - 01/17/23 7:03 PM ET

Waves crash into a seawall in Pacifica, Calif., Friday, Jan. 6, 2023. California weather calmed Friday but the lull was expected to be brief as more Pacific storms lined up to blast into the state, where successive powerful weather systems have knocked out power to thousands, battered the coastline, flooded streets, toppled trees and caused at least six deaths. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Natural disasters displaced millions of Americans last year, data shows. Meanwhile, the House Natural Resources Committee gets new Republicans — and one returnee who was stripped of his assignments in the past.

This is Energy & Environment, your source for the latest news focused on energy, the environment and beyond. For The Hill, we’re Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk. Someone forward you this newsletter?

Millions displaced by natural disasters in 2022

Natural disasters displaced more than 3 million Americans in 2022, including nearly
1 million in Florida alone, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The data, first reported by Pluribus News, indicates that about 3.33 million people were displaced by natural disasters over the past year. The plurality were in Florida, where such events forced 999,401 people — about 7 percent of the state’s population — from their homes.

The state was hit in September by Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 storm that made landfall in the southwest part of the state, killing at least 114 people and costing up to $65 billion in insured losses.

Louisiana saw a smaller number of people displaced, but a greater share of the population. The Census Bureau found 410,000 Louisianans, or 15 percent of the state’s population, were displaced last year. Natural disasters affecting the state in 2022 included multiple tornadoes, including a December outbreak that killed at least three people.
Small New England, Midwestern and Great Plains states saw the lowest percentage of their residents displaced by natural disasters in the last year, according to the census data. Indiana, Maine, North Dakota and Ohio all saw about 0.2 percent of residents displaced by disasters in 2022.

The United Nations’ refugee agency has identified natural disaster displacement as one of climate change’s “most devastating” impacts.

Heavy rains may provide Calif. some drought relief

Heavy rains in California have led to more than a dozen deaths and widespread destruction, but they are also offering at least a temporary reprieve from the historic drought that has plagued the state.

Over the past couple of weeks, California has seen torrential rain, as well as snow, sparking power outages and putting thousands under either evacuation or shelter-in-place orders. The extent to which the series of storms will make a long-term difference in the state’s drought, however, is more of an open question.

“It’s definitely too early to say that we’re out of the drought, so to speak,” said Andrew Ayres, research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center. But, he added, it has been a “really good start” for the year in terms of precipitation and snowpack.

As of last week, the U.S. Drought Monitor said that just 0.32 percent of California was under “extreme drought,” down from 27 percent of the state the week prior and 41 percent last month.

“We have seen improvement in drought conditions,” said Andrea Bair, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “We’ve increased our soil moisture and built those mountain snowpacks up even further to above-normal conditions.”

However:

Bair said, “we do have a long-term term drought that has persisted in much of the West for years.”
“The reservoir deficits are huge, very deep soil moisture deficits, significant groundwater depletion,” she added. “Those kinds of things take longer to overcome and to completely recover from.”