High-Impact Weather and Climate Events

High-impact events cause the majority of societal costs related to weather and climate. They provoke societal responses that can either enhance or detract from long-term adaptation to climate risk. In 2015, WWA began a new research focus on extremes that is designed to place high-impact events in the context of historical climate variability and projected climate change, assess how the risk of these events varies over time and space, and examine how high-impact events interact with place-based vulnerability.

The High-Impact Events Database has 280+ historical high-impact weather and climate events in our three-state region, and a complementary set of regional event maps showing how risk varies seasonally across the region for different types of weather and climate events.

The database is a curated collection of significant weather and climate-related events in the Western Water Assessment region. The types of events included are: avalanches, cold waves, dam failures, droughts, floods, hail, high winds, landslides, tornadoes, wildfires, and winter storms. We search federal, state, county, and local databases, library archives, news accounts, and other sources for current and historic notable weather and climate-related events in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. This database is not a scientific collection of extreme events. The majority of events included in this database are incidents that were identified as remarkable by one of the sources listed above.

All CPI-Adjusted Damage costs are 2022 values, calculated from: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/. CPI-Adjusted Damage costs are unavailable before the year 1913.

WWA High-Impact Events Database Map (1864-2021)

This map is a visual representation of all the high-impact events in our database by county from 1864-2021. The counties with no data represent counties with no events explicitly reported in the database.

State County City Date Event Type Deaths CPI Adjusted Sort ascending Unadjusted Summary Links
Utah Statewide June 01, 1983 Flood 7 $880,410,000.00 $300,000,000.00
Colorado Jefferson, Denver, Arapahoe, Kiowa Golden, Denver, Englewood May 06, 1973 Flood 2 $789,989,000.00 $120,000,000.00
Utah Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Box Elder, Tooele June 03, 1986 Flood $714,738,000.00 $268,000,000.00
Colorado Grand, Larimer Kremmling, Estes Park, Grand Lake, Granby October 14, 2020 Wildfire $613,253,000.00 $543,000,000.00
Utah Uintah, Carbon, Emery, Wayne, Sevier, Summit, Kane, Garfield, Piute, Millard, Juab, Beaver, Delta, Salt Lake, Utah, Davis April 13, 1983 Landslide, Flood $586,940,000.00 $200,000,000.00
Colorado El Paso Woodland Park, Manitou Springs, Colorado Springs June 23, 2012 Wildfire 2 $568,388,000.00 $446,460,000.00
Colorado Boulder Louisville, Superior December 30, 2021 Wildfire, High Wind 2 $553,604,000.00 $513,213,000.00
Utah Statewide January 01, 2002 Drought $519,926,000.00 $320,000,000.00
Colorado El Paso Colorado Springs July 28, 2016 Hail $429,663,000.00 $352,800,000.00
Utah Salt Lake Salt Lake City August 11, 1999 Tornado 1 $403,530,000.00 $230,000,000.00
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