List of Costliest Hurricanes in U.S. (if they hit in 2011)

[jinftl]

ICAT is an insurance holding company that is dedicated to the catastrophe insurance business (mainly hurricane and earthquake). ICAT has looked at the damage caused by past hurricanes to the U.S. and has 'normalized' the damage estimates to 2011 values.

From ICAT's website (link below): "Once the total economic damages for each storm are known, we use changes in inflation, wealth, and population to normalize these damages. This normalization method helps to compare all storms equally as if they all struck land in the current year."

Based on the normalized damage $, if these storms struck in 2011, they would comprise the Top 10 Costliest Hurricanes:



http://www.icatdamageestimator.com/toptendamages

Couple of interesting points:
* The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 would do almost as much damage today as Katrina and the 1900
Galveston hurricane combined if they both hit today too
* If it hit today, the 1900 Galveston Hurricane would be costlier than Katrina
* The 1944 hurricane was a Cat 1 and would do over $48 billion in damage if it hit today (landfall near Sarasota).
* From the rest of the Top 50 costliest storms below, it is clearly possible to have a $15-$25 billion tropical storm - Agnes and Diane hitting New York today would cause that much damage.
* Of the top 50 costliest storms in the U.S., 2 of them hit in June (both tropical storms) and 0 hit in July.

The rest of the Top 50 Costliest Hurricanes (normalized to 2011 $) are as follows:

http://www.icatdamageestimator.com/all- ... earchText=

[MGC]

Study is flawed....actual damage with Katrina was well in excess of the 81 billion....closer to 200 billion when include uninsured damage and US and local government spending. Then, you are comparing the cost of a house in Miami against the cost of a house along the gulf coast.......MGC

[jinftl]

Certainly there are lingering, uncounted costs for any storm, and with a storm of Katrina's magnitude, those are no doubt huge. But the $81 billion dollar estimate for Katrina does match what the NHC reported on Katrina. No doubt there are costs not factored into that - relocation expenses, losses for businesses, etc.

From NHC:

A preliminary estimate of the total damage cost of Katrina in the United States is assumed to be roughly twice the insured losses, or about $81 billion. This figure makes Katrina far and away the costliest hurricane in United States history.

Even after adjusting for inflation, the estimated total damage cost of Katrina is roughly double that of Hurricane Andrew (1992). Normalizing for inflation and for increases in population and wealth, only the 1926 hurricane that struck southern Florida surpasses Katrina in terms of damage cost.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/2005atlan.shtml

I think if anything can be taken away from this study, it is that hurricanes of years past hitting the same locations today would incur many times more damage because of population growth, value of property, etc. The specific dollar amounts will have some margin for debate, but the concept of normalizing storm damage to 2011 dollars is a valid practice in the insurance industry.

But, in no way does a storm's total $ value being 'less' than another storm diminish the experience of anyone who dealt head-on with the devastation Katrina brought to he Northern Gulf Coast. Population density and property values mean little if you have lost your home or business. Losing everything = losing everything.

Study is flawed....actual damage with Katrina was well in excess of the 81 billion....closer to 200 billion when include uninsured damage and US and local government spending. Then, you are comparing the cost of a house in Miami against the cost of a house along the gulf coast.......MGC

[MGC]

The Sunherald newspaper ran a story about a year after Katrina that accounted for the actual damage and destruction figures and it approached 200 billion. The NHC just uses insured losses the insurance companies report in their report. Anyway, using a dollar figure to measure a particular storm's damage is flawed due to a bunch a variables. Using the area's wealth is not an accurate measure of a storms damage. One house in the Miami area on the beach is equal to several here on the gulf coast.....MGC

[psyclone]

The Sunherald newspaper ran a story about a year after Katrina that accounted for the actual damage and destruction figures and it approached 200 billion. The NHC just uses insured losses the insurance companies report in their report. Anyway, using a dollar figure to measure a particular storm's damage is flawed due to a bunch a variables. Using the area's wealth is not an accurate measure of a storms damage. One house in the Miami area on the beach is equal to several here on the gulf coast.....MGC

the study is an attempt to quantify damage not in areal coverage but dollars so using an areas wealth is indeed a valid measure of a storm's damage.

[TYNI]

Study is flawed....actual damage with Katrina was well in excess of the 81 billion....closer to 200 billion when include uninsured damage and US and local government spending. Then, you are comparing the cost of a house in Miami against the cost of a house along the gulf coast.......MGC

Agree 100%. There is no formula for what I would call "diminished wealth" or "diminished spending power" for those in the affected regions, especially where the average wealth factor is potentially lower to begin with. It likely takes a region like Louisiana longer to re-accumulate or rebuild its wealth than perhaps other regions.

[jinftl]

I agree that there are intangible costs that can not be assessed a dollar value. This analysis is not denying that or diminishing that.

For all storms, there are costs that the insurance industry doesn't capture. I had a $12,000 special assessment for my condo after Wilma to cover damages that the homeowner's association insurance didn't (we had $1.75 million in damage and a $675,000 policy). That isn't included in the Wilma damage estimate here either- but boy was it impactful to me!

But at the same time, it is not unreasonable from a risk management and insurance viewpoint to try and put a quantifiable dollar value on potential storm disasters using past storms as a basis.

From the standpoint of pure economics, the same hurricane hitting an area of 6 million people with an average property value that is twice as high as the property values for an area of 1 million people is significant from the insurance industry and risk management point of view. This is a high-level view only.

This bears no relation on an individual basis, though. A total loss of your home or business is a total loss. If you lost your home in a storm that ranked #67 on the costliest storm scale, you still lost your home and it is a total loss and devastating and involved costs that could never be accurately measured by the insurance industry.


From this high-level, total dollar view, a weaker hurricane hitting queens, staten island, and the financial district of manhattan head-on could incur total costs greater than any storm on this list - that doesn't mean new york was wiped from the map like some areas on the MS Gulf were with Katrina - but the sheer volume of people and property will lead to an unprecedented $ disaster in NYC even with a weaker storm.

Study is flawed....actual damage with Katrina was well in excess of the 81 billion....closer to 200 billion when include uninsured damage and US and local government spending. Then, you are comparing the cost of a house in Miami against the cost of a house along the gulf coast.......MGC

Agree 100%. There is no formula for what I would call "diminished wealth" or "diminished spending power" for those in the affected regions, especially where the average wealth factor is potentially lower to begin with. It likely takes a region like Louisiana longer to re-accumulate or rebuild its wealth than perhaps other regions.

[psyclone]

it seems as if everytime there is an attempt to look at historical storms, invariably people break out their catastrophe pom poms and cheer on their home town disaster like it's a sports team. this study is an effort to quantify $ damage by an industry with skin in the game. it's not a case of "my daddy's storm can beat up your daddy's storm" or a new show on MTV: "pimp my cane". instead it should provoke thought about just how bad some historical storms would be if they happened today. Katrina is certainly up there but it could be much worse.

[jinftl]

From strictly a total $ damage standpoint, Katrina hitting 50 or 75 miles west of where she did would probably have been double the total damage...if not more than she ended up being. Not only would the stronger eastern eye wall have passed over the city of New Orleans with stronger winds than the city actually saw, it is quite possible that the levees in Jefferson Parish would not have held either and then you have several hundred thousand more homes under water (not to mention the additional loss of life). At the same time, you would have probably had devestating surge impacts to the east on the MS Gulf Coast still as well.

it seems as if everytime there is an attempt to look at historical storms, invariably people break out their catastrophe pom poms and cheer on their home town disaster like it's a sports team. this study is an effort to quantify $ damage by an industry with skin in the game. it's not a case of "my daddy's storm can beat up your daddy's storm" or a new show on MTV: "pimp my cane". instead it should provoke thought about just how bad some historical storms would be if they happened today. Katrina is certainly up there but it could be much worse.

[jdray]

Hard to quantify damage numbers like this.

If Dora hits today instead of 1964, there are way more homes in Ponte Vedra (many worth millions) than there were in 1964.

All of NE Florida has built up compared to 1964, when many areas were still very rural. St Johns, Duval, Clay counties are full of houses now. A good portion were built in the seventies and eighties. The population of those 3 counties went from a combined 300K in 1960, to almost 1.2 million since 1960.

Lots of areas like that in Florida.

So you need to look at this as if the storm hit, and nothing else changed since the storm hit (no one moved, died, born, etc) , here are the adjusted numbers.

[wxman57]

Hard to quantify damage numbers like this.

If Dora hits today instead of 1964, there are way more homes in Ponte Vedra (many worth millions) than there were in 1964.

All of NE Florida has built up compared to 1964, when many areas were still very rural. St Johns, Duval, Clay counties are full of houses now. A good portion were built in the seventies and eighties. The population of those 3 counties went from a combined 300K in 1960, to almost 1.2 million since 1960.

Lots of areas like that in Florida.

So you need to look at this as if the storm hit, and nothing else changed since the storm hit (no one moved, died, born, etc) , here are the adjusted numbers.

That's the whole point of the study - it takes into account the per-capita wealth and structures of TODAY. It doesn't assume the structures are the same as back when the hurricane originally hit. It's an estimate that includes whatever is in the same location now in 2011 dollars.

[x-y-no]

Heh ... and I was actually in four of the top eleven. Although I was two months old for Donna, so maybe that doesn't count.

[MGC]

If another Katrina hit the same place today as compared to 2005 the damage would only be a fracton of what it was in 2005. Very little along the beach front to get destroyed as it was in 2005. The Levees have been upgraded and the funnel has been closed off so I doubt the levees would fail like they did in 2005. True, it has been a long time since a monster hurricane has hit south Florida. Yes, Andrew was bad...but thanks to its small size damage was confined to the Homestead area. I would hate to be in south Fla if another big hurricane comes through that completely floods Miami Beach like the 1926 one did. The pounding waves will leave little but the strongest concrete reinforced buildings standing as I witnessed after Katrina. And with the slope of the continental shelf being as it is in South Florida I would imagine the waves will be bigger and more distructive along the South Florida shore.....MGC