2018 was another bad year overall
While Hurricane Michael is expected to cost around $10 billion in total insured losses when everything is settled, the overall economic impact from the storm is estimated to be $25 billion. That’s from a new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), acknowledging the gap between insured and overall damage costs, not just from Michael, but from the other 14 events in 2018 that each caused $1 billion+ losses. In all, last year’s disasters cost 247 lives and $91 billion.
NOAA’s State of the Climate: National Climate Report for 2018 reports that 2018 was the fourth highest in total economic costs from weather events since its record-keeping started in 1980. Hurricane Michael at $25 billion leads the list of economic impacts, followed by Hurricane Florence at $24 billion. Florence’s insured losses to date are $5.5 billion – a huge gap that underscores the many who did not have flood and/or homeowners insurance.
The various California wildfires collectively cost $24 billion with NOAA noting it’s the second year in a row of record U.S. wildfire losses. The wildfires, together with Hurricanes Michael and Florence, made up about $73 billion of the $91 billion in total economic losses.
“These billion-dollar disaster events are becoming an increasingly larger percentage of the cumulative damage from the full distribution of weather-related events at all scales and loss levels,“ said NOAA’s lead project scientist Adam Smith. “Clearly, the historically large U.S. losses from hurricanes and wildfires over the last few years have further skewed the total distribution of extreme weather costs.”
The report notes that 2018 was the 8th consecutive year of at least eight $1 billion+ disasters in the country, outpacing the overall average of 6.2 per year.
LMA Newsletter of 2-18-19
