2011: Ties 2008 --Most Extreme Weather Events

"With hurricane season still ahead, a record-tying nine $1 billion weather disasters have already racked the nation this year, federal, state and private forecasters reported Wednesday."

"the National Weather Service estimates that weather disasters have cost more than $35 billion this year, based on insurance estimates. Recent flooding in the Midwest along the Missouri and Souris rivers topped the $2 billion damage mark.

"The nation is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather," National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes says. The year has been marked by floods, drought and tornadoes, such as the May twister that killed 160 people in Joplin, Mo. Meanwhile, a Texas heat wave has cost $5.2 billion in crop and livestock losses so far "It doesn't take a wizard to predict that 2011 will go down in history," Hayes says."

Read on. It gets even more hair raising:

"Nationwide, the number of natural disasters has tripled in the last two decades, according to insurance firm Munich Reinsurance America. Thunderstorm losses since 1980 have become five times more severe, on average. There were $20 billion in such losses by midyear in 2011, doubling the average of the past three years."

Are you prepared? Are we prepared as a nation?