Two-thirds of American adults indicate that they experienced at least one of five major weather events in 2023, according to the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s latest Mood of the Nation Poll, conducted with 1,000 American adults from January 11 to 17, 2024.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that 2023 was the fifth hottest in U.S. history and the country saw a record 28 separate billion-dollar weather disasters. It turns out these conditions were not at all lost on the American people.
In response to the question, “in the past 12 months, has your local community experienced the following?” the survey found:
-
45% had experienced severe storms,
-
40% had experienced “long periods of unusually hot weather,”
-
20% had experienced droughts or water shortages,
-
19% had experienced severe flooding, and
-
12% who experienced severe wildfires.
Forty percent of American adults indicate that they experienced two or more of these extreme weather events in 2023, including a small minority who indicated that they had been hit by all five. On average, respondents indicated that they had experienced 1.4 of the severe weather events listed in the survey.