Web Site Estimates Damages if Old Storms Returned Today

This month marks the four-year anniversary of Hurricane Dennis, a Category 3 storm that slammed into the panhandle of Florida with sustained winds of 120 m.p.h. While Dennis inflicted more than $2.2 billion in damage in 2005 in what was an historically destructive hurricane season, it was not the most damaging hurricane to make landfall in July, according to a new Web site, www.icatdamageestimator.com, that calculates the damage previous storms might inflict if they were to hit today.

The ICAT Web site provides access to statistics for each of the 235 tropical storms and hurricanes that made landfall in the United States from 1900-2008, and answers the question: How much damage would these storms cause if they made landfall in 2009?

For instance, the category 4 hurricane that wiped out Galveston, Texas, on Sept. 8, 1900, would have caused more than $94 billion in damages if it were to make landfall this year, according to the site. Damage costs from another Galveston hurricane, also a category 4, which hit in August 1915, would come to more than $76 billion.

In addition to giving information by storm name, year and category, the site also allows users to select specific portions of the U.S. coastline to extract historical records and to calculate the current loss estimates. ICAT said its Web site will track all active storms during the 2009 hurricane season.

Topics Catastrophe Windstorm Hurricane Training Development