Losses From Debby Put At $28 Billion

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Debby, a tropical storm that was at one time a hurricane, did severe damage in Florida, both near Tampa and the panhandle on its way up the East Coast of the country. It was fed by warm water from the Atlantic the entire way.

AccuWeather’s initial estimate of damages is $28 billion. Additional reports on injuries and destruction could change the final figure.

AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter commented, “Debby’s first landfall as a hurricane in Florida, second landfall as a tropical storm in South Carolina and its impacts along its trek across the eastern United States are widespread and will be long-lasting. Storm surge, flash flooding and tornadoes have damaged homes, businesses and schools, and in some cases, the damage is severe. Travel disruptions and beach erosion have resulted in significant economic losses for the tourism industry in coastal areas during a very busy part of the summer vacation season.” Home insurance has become a $1 trillion problem when taken across all weather events.

Damage To Homes And Businesses

The AccuWeather figure is based on “damage to homes, businesses, infrastructure, facilities, roadways and vehicles as well as power outages, which results in food spoilage and interruption to medical care and reflects damage that has already occurred” as well as damage expected to occur after its initial estimate. And, NOAA has said that this hurricane season will be unusually destructive.

Storms Do Not Need To Be Category 5 To Cause Damage

The figure points out the fact that Hurricanes do not have to be Category 3 to Category 5 storms to do a great deal of damage. Debby did not pack extremely high winds, but it did dump a large number of inches of rain. Some of this was in areas hit by rain earlier in the week. The resulting floods were catastrophic in some cases.