Hurricane Harvey’s flooding of Houston, with 50 inches of rain in some places, contributed to 2017’s record losses from climate and weather disasters, NOAA reports. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images Hurricane Harvey’s extreme rainfall and the most devastating wildfire season on record contributed to $306 billion in damages from climate and weather disasters in the United States in 2017, shattering the previous record by more than $90 billion, according to a federal report released Monday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s recap of the nation’s climate over the past year found that 2017 was the third-warmest on record. What’s more, it was warmer than average in every state across the lower 48 and Alaska for the third consecutive year. (Hawaii is excluded because of a lack of historical data and other factors.) “That’s pretty unusual,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA and the lead author of the report. […]

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