Read our report on the extreme variability in how a state may face limited climate impacts one year and billions of dollars in damage the next—and how the scale of this impact compares to individual state expenditures and their ability to respond.

Climate disasters are growing in strength and frequency across the United States, from hurricanes that devastate the Southeast to wildfires that burn across Alaska and Hawaii. However, no one knows when or where the next tornado will strike nor how many farms will suffer in the next drought. For decades, the federal government has played a critical role in supporting states, local governments, and individuals to build resilience to disasters and to respond and recover after they hit. This federal aid helps provide state and local governments with a buffer against the growing and severe—yet unpredictable—damage from climate disasters, and states rely heavily on that aid when the most disastrous weather events strike. All of that is now changing.

Rather than expand much-needed support, the Trump Administration has instead denied, frozen, or eliminated many sources of federal aid for disaster resilience, response, and recovery—and declared an intention to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency entirely. Even funding that has ultimately been sent to states has often been delayed, only allocated in part, or required multiple state appeals before approval. This withdrawal of federal support—and the uncertainty regarding if or when it may arrive—threatens to overwhelm state and local governments and leave communities in the lurch when they need support the most. 

The Trump Administration has declared that disaster response should be shifted to states, and has demonstrated that goal through repeated denial of disaster response funds and the cancellation of nearly a billion dollars in federal resilience funding. Without a clear and gradual transition plan, any such massive shift of responsibilities would cause disruption and damage—but in the case of weather and climate disasters, mounting adequate preparation and response at the state and local level may be nearly impossible. Nearly every state requires a balanced budget, for example, whereas the federal government can incur debt if needed. Hiring expert staff and building programs and systems at the state and local level would require inefficient and unaffordable redundancies. Even more striking, however, is the sheer magnitude and the year-on-year variability of disaster costs, which introduce incredible budgeting challenges for states.

To better understand the scale and variability of climate disaster impacts at the state level, Just Solutions analyzed so-called billion-dollar climate disasters from 1980-2024 (using data from a database aggregated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which the Trump Administration has now retired).  These data do not capture smaller disasters, impacts such as business disruption, or reflect the inequities inherent in using a metric for impact based on total dollars of damage (e.g. the disproportionate impact of disasters on historically disinvested and vulnerable communities), but they do give a sense of the magnitude and variability of disaster impacts compared to a state’s ability to respond.

 In Figure 1, we compare the highest historic annual disaster cost incurred in each state (and Puerto Rico) to the average annual impact on each state. Across the United States, the average annual national cost of billion-plus-dollar disasters over this 45-year period was $65 billion dollars (CPI-adjusted), reflecting the destruction from wildfires, hurricanes, storms, drought, and other disasters across the country. We calculate that the highest total national impact in any given year was six times larger: $396 billion dollars in 2017, when Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Florida and Puerto Rico and Hurricane Harvey flooded Texas.

Figure 1. Ratio of Maximum to Average Billion-Dollar Disaster Impacts, by State (including Puerto Rico), 1980-2024. 37 of 50 states and Puerto Rico had higher annual variability in disaster impacts than the national average, increasing the challenge of budgeting for disasters. Data source: NOAA.¹

But this variability is much higher when viewed at the state and territory level. For New York State, the impact of the worst disaster year (2012, when Hurricane Sandy hit) was 26 times higher than the average disaster impact. For Texas, the economic impact of Hurricane Harvey was nearly 17 times the average disaster year. And the one-two punch of Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused an estimated $144 billion of damage in Puerto Rico—more than 40 times the average annual impact of billion-dollar disasters—leaving millions without electrical power for months and leading to a death toll in the thousands. 37 of 50 states and Puerto Rico had higher ratios than the US as a whole when comparing the worst disaster impact compared to the annual average. The federal government plays an important role as a buffer against these unpredictably high costs, providing support when an individual state could easily be overwhelmed. 

To get a sense of the scale of disasters and state ability to respond and assist with recovery, we next took a look at the magnitude of the worst annual climate and weather disasters compared to each state’s total annual expenditures. In Figure 2, we plot the highest impact for billion-dollar climate and weather disasters from 1980-2024, and compare it to fiscal year 2024 estimated expenditures. We include general funds, bonds, and other state funds, but exclude federal funds, to reflect the scale of budgets that states can potentially reallocate to respond to disasters without federal support. The government funding required for disaster response and recovery is not equivalent to disaster impact—some of this impact will be absorbed by insurance and other private sources and absorbed by survivors who are underinsured or ineligible for government assistance; even so, this comparison does provide a measure of state capacity to respond to extreme disasters.

Figure 2. Most costly historic disaster year compared to state expenditures. The largest annual impact from billion-dollar disasters² (CPI-adjusted) as a fraction of estimated state expenditures³ (fiscal year 2024, general funds, other funds, and bonds excluding federal funds) illustrates the potential scale of disaster impacts compared to state budgets without federal support. Tropical cyclones (hurricanes) in particular threaten to overwhelm budgets.

Six states and Puerto Rico—including large states like Texas and Florida—have faced disaster impacts that exceed their most recent total annual state expenditures (excluding federal funding). However, these incredibly high damage levels should not obscure the fact that even much smaller budget impacts can be hard for states to accommodate. We calculate that nearly two-thirds of states and Puerto Rico have had years in which annual billion-dollar disaster impacts (CPI-adjusted) exceeded 10% of their state expenditures (for the most recent year available, 2024)—and again, these numbers do not include impacts like business disruption, do not include smaller disasters, and are expected to continue to increase in the coming years.

The outsized impact of year-to-year variability is on full display in North Carolina’s ongoing response to Hurricane Helene, which struck in September 2024. NOAA places the impact on North Carolina at approximately $44 billion,⁴ while the state of North Carolina estimates the impact at nearly $60 billion.⁵ The federal government has either transferred or allocated $4 billion for Helene response and recovery. The State of North Carolina itself has allocated $1.6 billion to Helene recovery so far; Governor Josh Stein had asked the legislature for even more.⁶ But the Governor has requested $19 billion in federal funding that he says the state needs for Helene recovery⁷—equivalent to 55% of the Governor’s proposed total state budget expenditures.⁸ This request comes after accounting for the role of state funding and private insurance. North Carolina is struggling to allocate 5% of its annual budget to Helene response; it is unfathomable that they would be able to come up with 55% on their own. Meanwhile, FEMA rejected North Carolina’s request for ongoing funding for debris removal, which the Governor appealed,⁹ and was denied once again.¹⁰

What can states do now?

Facing growing climate disasters without access to federal dollars, state and local governments are going to continue to struggle to fund, staff, and coordinate efforts around disaster resilience, response, and recovery, and communities across the United States are likely to suffer. States and localities must endeavor to plan for increasingly intense yet unpredictable climate disasters compounded by the risk of limited, delayed, or denied federal support. Congress is pressing to save FEMA in some restructured form, which may continue to provide some buffer for states against climate disasters. And FEMA is in much need of reform: its National Flood Insurance Program is $22.5 billion dollars in debt; its response to disasters can be painfully slow, bureaucratic, and hard to navigate; and its programs often fail to reach low-income households, communities of color, and other vulnerable populations who need them most.

Building state and local capacity will take years, and even then many will likely still struggle to respond to major shocks, but some steps to begin the process include:

• Improve Data Collection and Transparency: Effective and equitable planning in states is often limited by a lack of data on current expenditures, as well as locally-relevant data on the most at-risk populations. Data needs include better tracking at the state and local level of where and how much money is spent, as well as which populations are most in need of support—such as communities with inadequate housing, urban heat islands, or poor stormwater management, which often affects low-income households and communities of color.

• Invest in Resilience: Investments in resilience are shown to significantly reduce the amount of total disaster response funding. Investments to improve year-round resilience for communities can help improve adaptive capacity in the face of more extreme climate disasters. Priorities include historically underinvested and disinvested communities, targeted support for vulnerable populations such as the elderly, comprehensive statewide planning, and resilience standards for new infrastructure. 

• Work with Other States: Some of the burdens of disaster response planning can be alleviated through multi-state coordination and resource sharing.

• Improve Budgeting Processes and Insurance: Without reliable federal government support, states will need to both proactively budget for disasters, design measures to ensure access to insurance, and incorporate future climate risks in planning.

• Fill in Known Gaps Left by FEMA: States can step in for specific roles where federal support has been eliminated—or was never effective in the first place—including targeting underserved communities and financing projects that lost federal aid. 

These efforts will not be easy, and require funding, staff capacity, and time. To the degree to which they are possible, however, there is also an opportunity for states to innovate new programs that improve upon existing federal disaster preparation and response, and set a new model for a reformed FEMA to follow.

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1. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). (2025). U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2025). DOI: 10.25921/stkw-7w73. Accessed: May 25, 2025. ↩︎
2. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). (2025). U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2025). DOI: 10.25921/stkw-7w73. Accessed: May 25, 2025. ↩︎
3. National Association of State Budget Offices. (2024).  2024 State Expenditure Report: Fiscal Years 2022–2024. Table 1. ↩︎
4. This is not stated directly, but derived from the September 2024 disaster impact on North Carolina, available in the Figure “1980-2024 North Carolina Billion Dollar Disaster Year-to-Date Event Cost (CPI-Adjusted)” at (accessed May 28, 2025). https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/state-summary/NC. The total Helene impact, estimated by NOAA across all states, was approximately $80 billion. (Source: Smith, A. (2025). 2024: An active year of U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. NOAA.) ↩︎
5. Governor Josh Stein. (February 20, 2025).  Hurricane Helene Recovery: Federal Funding Request. ↩︎
6. Governor Josh Stein. (May 19, 2025).  Hurricane Helene Recovery: Governor Josh Stein’s Recommendations. ↩︎
7. Governor Josh Stein. (February 20, 2025).  Hurricane Helene Recovery: Federal Funding Request ↩︎
8. Governor Josh Stein. (March 2025). Governor Josh Stein’s Recommended Budget, 2025-2027. ↩︎
9.  Governor Josh Stein. (May 2023, 2025). Post on X.  ↩︎
10. Barr, L. (May 28, 2025). Trump administration denies North Carolina request for Hurricane Helene relief at level Biden approved. ABC News. ↩︎