Doomscrolling is when you spend an excessive amount of time scrolling through social media looking for bad news and negative content, including natural disasters. Even if you haven’t heard the term, odds are that you’ve done it.

Each season seems to come with a new threat from Mother Nature in a cycle of extreme heat, drought, hurricane, flood. Rinse and repeat. It’s not surprising if you come away with the overwhelming feeling that weather is getting worse around the world.

But the question "is the weather getting worse?" does not have a simple answer. It is full of nuance, caveats and addendums. The answer is also always changing as experts get new data or find new patterns.

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Before we fully get into this, I must say that we are, as meteorologists, not here to predict doomsday and forecast rain on your future parades. This is a fact check on what is and isn’t getting worse, with some context and facts to weather-related anxieties you may have.

By understanding what is getting worse, you can better plan for the future and potentially relieve some anxieties that way.

So, is the weather getting worse?

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It’s not a yes/no question

First, it’s important to understand that experts are more certain about some things than others.

Let’s start with what we do know: Heat waves and heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent and more intense; extreme cold is happening less often; heavy rainfall is happening more often; and hurricanes are going through rapid intensification more often.

But while rapid intensification and heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent, hurricanes and flooding are not. Or, at least, there’s not enough data to say they are.

Before you object and point out that the frequency of flooding has increased in your hometown, let me clarify that some regions are experiencing flooding more often, like the Midwest and Northeast. Others, however, are experiencing flooding less often, like the West, Southwest and coastal Southeast.

And those are all on a regional scale. Local scale trends may be different depending on land use and infrastructure.

The point is that experts can’t say definitively that "flooding is happening more or less often in the U.S." It depends on the region and exact circumstances in place.

Why it may feel even worse

It’s not just about what’s actually happening outside our windows that provides a very doom-and-gloom perspective on our planet’s weather and climate.

There’s also some other aspects at play, and understanding how things work and what the data is and isn’t telling us is another important piece of this puzzle.

The table above shows that strong tornadoes are not happening more often. In fact, a 12-year span without a single confirmed EF5 tornado in the U.S. just ended last year.

But the total number of confirmed tornadoes has climbed in recent decades, by an average of more than 10 tornadoes a year.

But that doesn’t mean that there are actually more tornadoes happening in the U.S. Radar technology is constantly evolving and getting better at detection, and the addition of social media helps people report possible tornadoes in their area for the National Weather Service to investigate. 

(MORE: How weather radar began and how it's evolved since then)

Studies have even shown that, once you remove any non-weather-related factors, the annual frequency of tornadoes in the U.S. has remained fairly constant. 

There has also been an upward trend in the number of hurricanes that cause over $1 billion in damage, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the hurricanes are what is changing.

The number of landfalling hurricanes in the U.S. has actually remained relatively steady over the past several decades. What has changed, however, is the amount of people who live on the coast and are potentially exposed to hurricanes.

Inflation also makes it easier to reach that billion-dollar threshold now. A $1 billion disaster in 1980, the first year of data for billion-dollar disasters from NCEI and Climate Central, is equivalent to roughly $4 billion in 2026.

The population of coastal counties for states along the Gulf and East coasts rose by nearly 50% from 1970 to 2010, according to data from NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management. That means more people are directly exposed to the dangers of a landfalling hurricane and there is more infrastructure that can potentially be damaged.

More destruction from tropical cyclones can make it seem like the threat is growing, when actually humans are just increasingly in their way.

It is worth noting, however, that this graphic does not take into account the intensity of the storm at the time of landfall, which can be another factor.

There is also something to be said about the psychology of social media and the way that the algorithms that determine what we see on our feeds works and how they play into our perception of the world around us.

Bad news is more likely to trend on social media, and the level of connectivity of social media means that you can see bad news and natural disasters from all over the world almost as if it was happening in your backyard.

That sort of imagery will embed itself more thoroughly into your brain than a sunny, good day because of something called “negativity bias,” and it can start to add up.

The takeaway

We’ve gone through a lot of caveats, but something worth remembering is that the number of natural disasters that cause at least $1 billion in damage has been climbing sharply since the early 2000s.

(MORE: There were 23 billion-dollar disasters in the US, but this usual culprit was not among them)

That trend may be at least partially related to increased exposure to destructive weather and inflation, but it also does reveal a trend of dangerous weather.

And even if the weather itself was not getting worse, more people exposed to hazardous weather can be just as bad in terms of answering the question “will it impact me and my life?” simply because you might be one of those “more” people.

While it is important to be aware of how the world around us is changing, it’s also essential to take the time to put your phone down and take the good with the bad, letting yourself enjoy good weather while taking time to prepare for bad.

Sara Tonks is a content meteorologist with weather.com and has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Georgia Tech in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, along with a master’s degree from Unity Environmental University in Marine Science.

GRAPHIC SOURCES:

1. IPCC AR6 WG1, Chapter 11 — Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate (2021)
2. Fifth National Climate Assessment, Chapter 2 — Climate Trends (2023)
3. NOAA GFDL — Global Warming and Hurricanes
4. Bhatia et al., "Objective Tropical Cyclone Peak Intensification Rates," Scientific Reports (2023)
5. Gensini & Brooks, "Spatial trends in United States tornado frequency," npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2018)
6. Yale Climate Connections — "Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger" (2026)
7. NOAA NSSL — Strong and Violent Tornado Climatology (Brooks)
8. Mallakpour & Villarini, "The changing nature of flooding across the central United States," Nature Climate Change (2015)
9. Slater & Villarini, "Recent trends in U.S. flood risk," Geophysical Research Letters (2016)
10. Chen et al., "The intensification of the strongest nor'easters," PNAS (2025)
11. NOAA Climate Program Office — NCA5: Drought and Climate Change in 10 Maps