Natural Disasters
Get data on earthquakes and 42 other disaster types from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains a storm events database that contains 42 types of natural disasters, ranging from rip tides to heavy fogs. Separately, NOAA keeps a significant earthquake archive.

Dealing with natural disaster data can be tricky. All events are not equally dangerous. Hurricanes have claimed over a thousand lives in the U.S. since 1996 while wildfires have taken 99 lives during the same period, while other storms can cause damage in the billions of dollars without causing any fatalities.

Limitations

For earthquakes and tornados, NOAA’s records go back to 1950, while all others events date back to 1996. You can download and process the raw files using TIME’s open-source script.