John Morales: Fears of backloaded hurricane season materialized in awful way in Florida
Fears of a backloaded hurricane season materialized in an awful way in the past few weeks. Hurricanes Helene and Milton collectively claimed hundreds of lives. And each hurricane is estimated to have produced at least $50 billion in damage.
Fifty billion dollars is considered to be the threshold for "truly historic events," according to meteorologist and economist Adam Smith from NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information.
Adjusting for inflation, only eight hurricanes in American history have exceeded $50 billion in damages. South Floridians are intimately familiar with the first one to reach that level of destruction - Hurricane Andrew in 1992 ($60B). The costliest hurricane of all-time happened 13 years later – Hurricane Katrina in 2005 ($200B).
Seven years later, Hurricane Sandy transformed into what was labeled a "superstorm" and generated $88 billion in losses for New Jersey, New York, and neighboring states. After a slightly shorter span of 5 years, we suffered three costly calamities in a row: 2017's hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, which collectively produced $339 billion in damage!
By then, a clear trend had been established. Billion-dollar disasters were multiplying.
Hurricane Ida damaged $85 billion in property in 2021, followed by Hurricane Ian's $119 billion in 2022. Ian is Florida's costliest natural disaster.
Helene is pretty much guaranteed to exceed $50 billion in damages. Milton, according to experts, will follow. If so, that makes for a total of seven mega-damaging hurricanes in seven years. Granted, there are more things in harm's way. People seem hellbent in building in the most vulnerable places, like close to the ocean. Rising construction costs also means that it's more expensive to rebuild.
But climate change is playing an outsized role in the growth of these very costly weather events. A greater proportion of tropical storms are reaching violently catastrophic category 4 and 5 intensities. Damaging winds are penetrating further inland, spreading damage far beyond what used to be the norm.
Hurricanes are also moving slower and producing more rain, leading to devastating floods and landslides. As insurance expert John Dickson from Aon Edge put it, "the weather seems to be, in many cases, moving faster than we as a society are able to keep pace with it."
Fortunately, the Atlantic has quieted down tremendously since Milton's Florida landfall. Only two systems with a low chance for tropical development were on the map at the end of this week. One was in the western Caribbean and the other was near the northeastern Caribbean.
The most likely outcome for these disturbances is that they will lose a race against increasing upper-level wind shear, which will likely produce an extremely hostile environment before they can organize.
With the first "cold" front of the year making it all the way south to the Florida Straits, Floridians know that the effective end of hurricane season is near. But just two years ago Hurricane Nicole struck Florida's east coast in November.
Hopefully we can get through to November 30th unscathed.
John Morales in NBC6's hurricane specialist.
