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Eighteen years after Hurricane Charley made landfall in 2004, Hurricane Ian made landfall in nearly the same location, also as a Category 4 hurricane. Unlike Hurricane Charley (2004), water more so than wind was the impetus behind the disaster that unfolded. Despite being a below-design-level wind event, the large windfield drove a powerful storm surge as much as 13 ft high (relative to the NAVD8 vertical datum) in the barrier islands of Sanibel, Ft. Myers Beach, and Bonita Beach. Flooding was extensive along not only the Florida coast, but also well inland into low-lying areas as far north as Duval County and the storm’s second landfall site in South Carolina. As such, Hurricane Ian will likely be one of the costliest landfalling hurricanes of all time in the US, claiming over 100 lives. The impacts from Hurricane Ian were most severe in the barrier islands from the combination of storm surge and high winds, with many buildings completely washed away, and others left to deal with significant scour and eroded foundations. Several mobile/manufactured home parks on the barrier islands fared particularly poorly, offering little to no protection to anyone unfortunate enough to shelter in them. The damage was not restricted to buildings, as the causeways out to the barrier islands were washed away in multiple locations. In contrast, wind damage from Hurricane Ian appears less severe overall relative to other Category 4 storms, perhaps due to a combination of actual wind intensity being less than Category 4 at the surface at landfall, and the improvements in building construction that have occurred since Hurricane Charley struck 18 years earlier. It is notable that extensive losses were in part driven by decades-long construction boom of residential structures in Ft. Myers and Cape Coral since the 1950s and 1960s, expanding communities and neighborhoods encroaching upon vulnerable coastlines. Beyond serving as an important event to validate current and evolving standards for coastal construction, Hurricane Ian provides a clarion call to reconsider the ramifications of Florida's coastal development under changing climate. This project encompasses the products of StEER's response to this event: Preliminary Virtual Reconnaissance Report (PVRR), Early Access Reconnaissance Report (EARR) and Curated Dataset.
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This content will become publicly available on January 1, 2026
Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United States: 1900–2022
Abstract Since 1900, landfalling hurricanes have been the costliest of all weather-related disasters to afflict the contiguous United States. To provide a present-day (2022) reevaluation of this risk, this study employs an improved normalization approach to better understand potential economic event losses in the context of contemporary societal conditions. The updated methodology identifies impacted coastal counties using the newly available radius of maximum winds at landfall. Hurricane Katrina is the most expensive hurricane since 1900, with a likely 2022 normalized cost of $234 billion. Combined losses from the 50 most expensive hurricane events are ∼ $2.9 trillion in normalized economic losses. The study also explores some “analog storms” where comparisons can be made between two historic storms with similar landfall locations. For example, category 5 Andrew (1992) has lower 2022 normalized losses than category 4 Great Miami (1926), at $125 billion versus $178 billion, most likely due to the significantly different radius of maximum wind size (10 vs 20 n mi; 1 n mi = 1.852 km). As with previous studies, we conclude that increases in inflation, coastal population, regional wealth, and higher replacement costs remain the primary drivers of observed increases in hurricane-related damage. These upsurges are especially impactful for some coastal regions along the U.S. Gulf and Southeast Coasts that have seen exceptionally high rates of population/housing growth in comparison to countrywide growth. Exposure growth trends are likely to continue in the future and, independent of any influence of climate change on tropical cyclone behavior, are expected to result in greater hurricane-related damage costs than have been previously observed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2322270
- PAR ID:
- 10611828
- Editor(s):
- Landsea, C
- Publisher / Repository:
- BAMS
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
- Volume:
- 106
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0003-0007
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- E51 to E67
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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