Even though 2022 wasnt near record hot for the United States, it was the third-wildest year nationally both in number of extremes that cost $1 billion and overall damage from those weather catastrophes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report issued at the American Meteorological Societys conference.

The amount, cost and death toll of billion-dollar weather disasters make up a key measurement, adjusted for inflation, that NOAA uses to see how bad human-caused climate change is getting. They led to at least 474 deaths.

People are seeing the impacts of a changing climate system where they live, work and play on a regular basis, NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said at a Tuesday press conference. With a changing climate, buckle up. More extreme events are expected.

Hurricane Ian, the costliest drought in a decade and a pre-Christmas winter storm pushed last years damages to the highest since 2017. The only more expensive years were 2017 when Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria struck and the disastrous 2005 when numerous hurricanes, headlined by Katrina, pummeled the Southeast, federal meteorologists said. The only busier years for billion-dollar disasters were 2020 and 2021.

Ian was the third-costliest U.S. hurricane on record with $112.9 billion in damage, followed by $22.2 billion in damage from a western and midwestern drought that halted barge traffic on the Mississippi River, officials said. The $165 billion total for 2022 doesnt even include a total yet for the winter storm three weeks ago, which could push it close to $170 billion, officials said.

More than 40% of the continental United States was under official drought conditions for 119 straight weeks, a record in the 22 years of the federal drought monitor, easily passing the old mark of 68 straight weeks, Spinrad said. The country peaked at 63% of the nation in drought in 2022. Spinrad said he expects the atmospheric river pouring rain on California to provide some relief, but not a lot.

Climate change is supercharging many of these extremes that can lead to billion-dollar disasters, said NOAA applied climatologist and economist Adam Smith, who calculates the disasters, updating them to factor out inflation. He said more people are also building in harms way, along pricey coasts and rivers, and lack of strong construction standards is also an issue. With a good chunk of development beachside, real estate inflation could be a small localized factor, he said.

The United States has some of the consistently most diverse and intense weather and climate extremes that youll see in many parts of the world. And we have a large population thats vulnerable to these extremes, Smith told The Associated Press. So its really an imbalance right now.

Climate change is a hard-to-ignore factor in extremes, from deadly heat to droughts and flooding, Smith and other officials said.

The risk of extreme events is growing and they are affecting every corner of the world, NOAA chief scientist Sarah Kapnick said.

The problem is especially bad when it comes to dangerous heat, said NOAA climate scientist Stephanie Herring, who edits an annual study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that calculates how much of the extreme weather in past years was worsened by climate change.

Research is showing that these extreme heat events are also likely to become the new normal, Herring said at the weather conference.

Theres been a dramatic upswing in the size and number of super costly extremes in the U.S. since about 2016, Smith said. In the past seven years, 121 different billion-dollar weather disasters have caused more than $1 trillion in damage and killed more than 5,000 people.

Those years dwarf what happened in the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s. For example, in the entire decade of the 1990s there were 55 different billion-dollar disasters that cost $313 billion total and claimed 3,062 lives.

Its not just one but many, many different types of extremes across much of the country, Smith said. If extremes were on a bingo card, we almost filled up the card over the last several years.

In 2022, there were nine billion-dollar non-tropical storms, including a derecho, three hurricanes, two tornado outbreaks, one flood, one winter storm, a megadrought and costly wildfires. The only general type of weather disaster missing was an icy freeze that causes $1 billion or more in crop damage, Smith said. And last month, Florida came close to it, but missed it by a degree or two and some preventive steps by farmers, he said.

That prevented freeze was one of two silver linings in 2022 extremes, Smith said. The other was that the wildfire season, though still costing well over $1 billion, wasnt as severe as past years, except in New Mexico and Texas, he said.

For the first 11 months of 2022, California was going through its second-driest year on record, but drenchings from an atmospheric river that started in December turned it to only the ninth-driest year on record for California, said NOAA climate monitoring chief Karin Gleason.

With a third straight year of a La Nina cooling the eastern Pacific, which tends to change weather patterns across the globe and moderate global warming, 2022 was only the 18th-warmest year in U.S. records, Gleason said.

It was a warm year certainly above average for most of the country but nothing off the charts, Gleason said. The nations average temperature was 53.4 degrees (11.9 degrees Celsius), which is 1.4 degrees (0.8 degrees) warmer than the 20th century average.

The year was 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) below normal for rain and snow, the 27th-driest out of 128 years, Gleason said.

NOAA and NASA on Thursday will announce how hot the globe was for 2022, which wont be a record but is likely to be in the top seven or so hottest years. European climate monitoring group Copernicus released its calculations Tuesday, saying 2022 was the fifth-hottest globally and second-hottest in Europe.

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions which is what traps heat to cause global warming rose 1.3% in 2022, according to a report released Tuesday by the Rhodium Group, a think tank. Thats less than the economy grew. The emissions increase was driven by cars, trucks and industry with electric power generation polluting slightly less.

Its the second straight year, both after lockdowns eased, that American carbon pollution has grown after fairly steady decreases for several years. It makes it less likely that the United States will achieve its pledge to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, according to the Rhodium report.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about APs climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A lingering bird flu outbreak, combined with soaring feed, fuel and labor costs, has led to U.S. egg prices more than doubling over the past year, and hatched a lot of sticker shock on grocery aisles.

The national average price for a dozen eggs hit $3.59 in November, up from $1.72 a year earlier, according to the latest government data. Thats putting stress on consumer budgets and the bottom lines of restaurants, bakeries and other food producers that rely heavily on eggs.

Grocery prices that were up 12% in November are driving inflation higher, even though the overall pace of price increases slowed a bit through the fall as gas prices eased.

But egg prices are up significantly more than other foods even more than chicken or turkey because egg farmers were hit harder by the bird flu. More than 43 million of the 58 million birds slaughtered over the past year to control the virus have been egg-laying chickens, including some farms with more than a million birds apiece in major egg-producing states like Iowa.

Everyone who approaches the egg case a Hy-Vee grocery store in Omaha, has a sour face, said shopper Nancy Stom.

But even with the cost increases, eggs remain relatively cheap compared to the price of other proteins like chicken or beef, with a pound of chicken breasts going for $4.42 on average in November and a pound of ground beef selling for $4.85, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Its still an inexpensive meal, Stom said. But the 70-year-old said that at these prices, shell watch her eggs more closely in the fridge and try not to let them go bad before they get used.

If prices remain this high, Kelly Fischer said she will start thinking more seriously about building a backyard chicken coop in Chicago because everyone in her family eats eggs.

We (with neighbors) are contemplating building a chicken coop behind our houses, so eventually I hope not to buy them and have my own eggs and I think the cost comes into that somewhat, the 46-year-old public school teacher said while shopping at HarvesTime Foods on the citys North Side. For me, its more of the environmental impact and trying to purchase locally.

In some places, it can even be hard to find eggs on the shelves. But egg supplies overall are holding up because the total flock is only down about 5% from from its normal size of around 320 million hens. Farmers have been working to replace their flocks as soon as they can after an outbreak.

Jakob Werner, 18, said he tries to find the cheapest eggs he can because he eats five or six of them a day while hes trying to gain weight and build muscle.

For a while, I just stopped eating eggs as they got more expensive. But since theyre my favorite food, I came back to them in the end, said Werner, who lives in Chicago. So I think for like a few months I just stopped eating eggs, waited for the price to come down. It never did. So now Im buying again.

Purdue University agricultural economist Jayson Lusk said he believes the bird flu outbreak is the biggest driver in the price increases. Unlike past years, the virus lingered throughout the summer and made a resurgence last fall infecting egg and poultry farms.

Bird flu is not the only factor, but in my view its the main driver of what were experiencing at the moment, Lusk said.

But the president and CEO of the American Egg Board trade group, Emily Metz, said she believes all the cost increases farmers have faced in the past year were a bigger factor in the price increases than bird flu.

When youre looking at fuel costs go up, and youre looking at feed costs go up as much as 60%, labor costs, packaging costs all of that those are much much bigger factors than bird flu for sure, Metz said.

Jada Thomson, a University of Arkansas agricultural economist, said there may be some relief coming in egg prices in the next couple months because egg farmers have been steadily replacing their flocks lost to bird flu last year and demand will ease a bit now that people are done with their holiday baking.

But she said bird flu remains a wildcard that could still drive prices higher if there are more sizeable outbreaks at egg farms.

Farmers are doing all they can to limit the spread, but the disease is easily spread by migrating wild birds and the virus can be picked up on clothing or vehicles.

But there are some things that are just outside of our control, Thompson said. You cant control nature sometimes.

Food producers and restaurants are hurting because its hard to find a good substitute for eggs in their recipes.

Any decrease in egg prices would be welcome at Patti Stobaughs two restaurants and two bakeries in Conway and Russelville, Arkansas, because all of her ingredients and supplies are more expensive these days. For some of her baked goods, Stobaugh has switched to a frozen egg product thats not quite as pricey, but shes still buying eggs for all the breakfasts she serves.

A case of 15 dozen eggs has gone from $36 to $86 over the last year, but flour, butter, chicken and everything else she buys is also more expensive. Stobaugh said that has her hyper vigilant about every little item.

Shes already increased her prices 8% in the past year, and she may have to soon increase them again. Its a delicate balance of trying not to make it too expensive for people to eat out and hurting sales, but she doesnt have much choice while trying to provide for her 175 employees.

We have a lot of employees that work for us and were responsible for making payroll every week and supporting their families. We take that very seriously. But it certainly has been tough, Stobaugh said.

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On Tuesday, the House of Vettii, Domus Vettiorum in Latin, was being formally unveiled after 20 years of restoration. Given fresh life were frescoes from the latest fashion in Pompeii wall decoration before the flourishing city was buried under the volcanic ash furiously spewing from Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The unveiling of the restored home is yet another sign of the rebirth of Pompeii, which followed decades of modern bureaucratic neglect, flooding and pillaging by thieves in search of artifacts to sell.

That is delighting tourists and rewarding experts with tantalizing fresh insights into the everyday life of what is one of the most celebrated remnants of the ancient world.

The House of the Vetti is like the history of Pompeii and actually of Roman society within one house, Pompeiis director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, gushed as he showed off an area of the domus known as the Cupid Rooms last month.

Were seeing here the last phase of the Pompeian wall painting with incredible details, so you can stand before these images for hours and still discover new details, the archaeological parks energetic director told The Associated Press ahead of the public inauguration.

So, you have this mixture: nature, architecture, art. But it is also a story about the social life of the Pompeiian society and actually the Roman world in this phase of history, Zuchtriegel added.

Previous restoration work, which involved repeated application of paraffin over the frescoed walls in hopes of preserving them, resulted in them becoming very blurred over time, because very thick and opaque layers formed, making it difficult to read the fresco, said Stefania Giudice, director of fresco restoration.

But the wax did serve to preserve them remarkably.

Zuchtriegel ventured that the fresh readings of the revived fresco painting reflect the dreams and imagination and anxieties of the owners because they lived between these images, which include Greek mythological figures.

And who were these owners? The Vettis were two men Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus. In addition to having part of their names in common, they shared a common past not as descendants of noble Roman families accustomed to opulence, but rather, Pompeii experts say, almost certainly, as once enslaved men who were later freed.

It is believed that they became wealthy through the wine trade. While some have hypothesized the two were brothers, there is no certainty about that.

In the living room, known as the Hall of Pentheus, a fresco depicts Hercules as a child, crushing two snakes, in an illustration of an episode from the Greek heros life. According to mythology, Hera, the goddess wife of Zeus, sent snakes to kill Hercules because she was furious that he was born from the union of Zeus with a mortal woman, Alcmena.

Might Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus have recognized their own life story in some way in the figure of Hercules who overcame challenge after challenge in his life?

Thats a question that intrigues Zuchtriegel.

After years in slavery, the men then had an incredible career after that and reached the highest ranks of local society, at least economically, judging by their upscale domus and garden, Zuchtriegel said. They evidently tried to show their new status also through culture and through Greek mythological paintings, and its all about saying, Weve made it and so we are part of this elite of the Roman world.

Pompeiis architect director of restoration work, Arianna Spinosa, called the restored home one of the iconic houses of Pompeii. The residence represents the Pompeiian domus par excellence, not only because of the frescoes of exceptional importance, but also because of its layout and architecture.

Ornamental marble baths and tables surround the garden.

First unearthed during archaeological excavations in the late 19th century, the domus was closed in 2002 for urgent restoration work, including shoring up roofing. After a partial reopening in 2016, it was closed again in 2020 for the final phase of the work, which included restoration of the frescoes and of the floor and colonnades.

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