The 12 States with the Most Dangerous Weather

Author(s):

The start of the holiday travel season came with its share of ice storms and winter weather. These 12 states have the most dangerous weather, according to government statistics.

Thanksgiving ushered in the holiday travel season, and already those hitting the road had to deal with hazardous weather. Oklahoma, for one, got blasted with ice storms and flooding. The storm caused tens of thousands to lose power, but fortunately no loss of life was reported.

With winter just around the corner and more holiday travel in most peoples’ near future, we’ve decided to take a look at the most dangerous states when it comes to hazardous weather.

The data come from the National Weather Service’s Office of Services and the National Climatic Data Center. They cover fatalities, injuries, and damage directly attributed to weather. Thus, a car accident that may have occurred during a storm wouldn’t necessarily make this list, unless weather was determined to be a chief cause.

Overall, 384 people died last year as a result of hazardous weather. Another 2,203 were injured because of hazardous weather. Rip currents (54) and hazardous wind (54) caused the most fatalities in 2014, although a 10-year average shows extreme heat and tornadoes usually are the most deadly weather phenomena, killing 124 people and 110 people per year, respectively.

What follows are the 12 states with the most hazardous weather. Each state capsule includes statistics from 2014 on weather-related injuries, fatalities, property damage, and crop damage. We’ve chosen to rank the states based on the number of injuries, since in most states the number of fatalities is too small to be a good indicator.