Work

Continental United States direct Atlantic tropical cyclone fatalities: 1963–2024

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Tropical cyclone (TC) fatality attribution is critical for understanding changing risk patterns, warning effectiveness, and informing emergency management strategies. Despite this, publicly available TC fatality time series data are incomplete. The last publication on TC fatalities, broken down by peril, spanned 1963–2012. To extend this record and capture more recent trends in TC mortality patterns, we present a publicly accessible fatalities database of direct continental United States TC fatalities spanning 1963–2024. We find that the leading cause of TC fatalities is freshwater flood (36%) followed by storm surge (33%). Freshwater flood fatalities are common across storms (10% of storms have >1 fatality), whereas surge fatalities are concentrated in a smaller number of high-impact events (3% of storms have >1 fatality). We also note that high fatality years tend to coincide with high seasonal Atlantic accumulated cyclone energy, with low fatality years coinciding with lower seasonal accumulated cyclone energy.

Source: npj natural hazards.

DOI: 10.1038/s44304-026-00178-8