$500 Billion in Damage during the 2024 hurricane season? You Ain’t seen nothing yet.
The hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, will end this week. It produced 18 named storms with winds over 39 miles per hour. Of these, eleven were hurricanes, meaning they had wind speeds of 74 miles per hour or greater. Three were major hurricanes, with wind speeds above 111 miles per hour. Five of the hurricanes made landfall in the US. According to AccuWeather, the total damages and economic loss of all these were about $500 billion.
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Three hurricanes — Beryl, Helene and Miltron — caused the most financial damage. Beryl hit the Texas coast near Houston. Helene crippled some parts of Florida and did significantly more damage in western North Carolina that will take months and, in some cases, years to repair. Meanwhile, Milton hammered Florida south of Tampa, fortunately and missing a direct hit on the city and it environs.
AccuWeather experts say the $500 billion in damages will be much worse than in any previous hurricane season, with one reason being that the storms created 120 tornadoes, which caused much more local damage than the hurricanes themselves in several cases. The AccuWeather data not only includes current damages. It also include lost economic opportunity in the future.
If hurricane seasons continue to get worse — and they will — this number will likely rise toward $1 trillion.
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