This year, I see a different trend. Not a single news source I have perused ever gave a damage estimate from Hurrricane Dennis. All I kept seeing were comparisons to last year's Ivan, but no definitive $$ amount assessed.
Well, after some more digging, I finally found some media websites that have given some estimate for Dennis' carnage:
From the Lancaster, PA newspaper site:
BERLIN (AP) - The total insured damage from Hurricane Dennis, which hit parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast over the weekend, will amount to between $3 billion and $5 billion, an insurance company estimated Monday.
The CNN Money website has this to say about Dennis:
Risk Management Solutions expects the hurricane to result in $1 billion to $5 billion in insured losses. That estimate includes insured losses from direct wind damage, inland rain and flooding, and factors in inflated repair costs after 2004's storms.
AIR Worldwide estimates a lower figure, in the range between $1 billion and $2.5 billion.
Another loss modeling firm, Eqecat Inc., came in with a significantly higher estimate of Dennis's cost -- with insured losses between $3 billion and $8 billion.
From Wikipedia:
Dennis caused at least 71 deaths in the United States and Caribbean, and caused $5-9 billion in damage, about half of it in the Caribbean. Damage was not as high as expected in the United States, mainly because Dennis was more compact and moved through quicker than initially forecast
--Lou
