Thanks to improved technology and government-funded projects, the United States is better positioned to mitigate extreme weather events as hurricane and wildfire seasons kick into high gear this summer, President Joe Biden said Wednesday.

Biden held a White House meeting with agency leaders from across his administration to discuss ongoing preparations and response plans. He’s held the meeting each year since taking office.

The president noted that hurricanes and other extreme weather events caused more than $165 billion in damages last year and said wildfires this year have already destroyed a combined area nearly the size of Maryland.

“With the impacts of climate change rapidly intensifying, more and more Americans will be affected,” Biden said.

Biden touted his policies aimed at reducing the impact of extreme weather events, such as investments in strengthening community resilience to drought, flooding and wildfires; projects to address droughts in the West, including by conserving tens of millions of gallons of water; and efforts to harden power grids to withstand stronger storms.

He pointed to Typhoon Mawar, a Category 4 storm that slammed into Guam last week, causing flooding and property damage and knocking out power. But Biden said the recent installation of concrete utility poles helped mitigate the disruption to the island’s electrical and communications systems. 

“As opposed to wooden posts, which would have snapped,” he said. “But the poles cost more upfront — that's obvious — but they save money, they save lives, and they last a long time.

“The pace of recovery there is an example of the importance of investing in our infrastructure,” the president said, adding, “There’s more to do” to better protect the country.

Biden also said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration modeling systems are getting better at forecasting “hurricanes, their tracks, their intensity, their associated storm surge, which means saving more lives because we can anticipate what is likely to happen with greater accuracy.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is utilizing advanced satellite technology to help better predict the paths of wildfires and storms “so that we can better position our resources ahead of time to respond.”

Biden closed the meeting by thanking first responders, whom he referred to as “brave Americans” who “put their lives on the line to keep our communities safe.”

NOAA is predicting near-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean this year, including 12 to 17 named storms, five to nine hurricanes and one to four major hurricanes. 

Accuweather forecasts there will be 60,000 to 75,000 wildfires in the U.S. this year, burning 6.5 million to 8.25 million acres of land. That would be near or slightly above the annual average for the past two decades.