Weather fatalities in one chart  Hurricane Sandy has claimed
casualties across the Eastern seaboard, with a death toll of at
least 33 at last count. This, sadly, is part of a broader trend
of increasing weather-related fatalities since the 1980s. While
traditional weather-related dangers, such as lightning, have
decreased in salience, heat waves and hurricanes are inflicting
heavy casualties.  I tallied up results from the National
Weather Service's fatality data to see how deaths caused by
weather-related events have changed over recent decades:
"Other" includes cold, winter/snow, rip current and
miscellaneous weather events. Part of the increase in that
category reflects better NWS record-keeping, but the spike is
striking, nonetheless. Also of concern: The peaks since the '80s
have grown more severe. While in the 1940s and '50s the worst
years saw about 800 deaths, 1995 (with the Chicago heat wave)
and 2005 (with Hurricane Katrina) each saw about 1,400
fatalities. And last year was nearly as grim, with 1,