Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United States: 1900-2022

Since 1980 landfalling continental US hurricanes have caused over one trillion dollars in damage (Consumer Price Index-adjusted) with damage increases growing exponentially since 1900. In the context of future risk mitigation, understanding these loss trends and their drivers through time is of great importance. In order to understand hurricane loss trends through time we use “normalization” so that the direct economic losses at the time can be understood in the context of contemporary societal conditions. Our research provides an update to normalized continental US hurricane economic losses from 1900 to 2022. It also provides updates to the existing methodology. The 2022 normalization methodology finds Hurricane Katrina as the costliest historical hurricane since 1900 at US$228 billion. The top 50 hurricanes resulted in over US$2.8 trillion in economic losses. The primary drivers of observed increases in hurricane-related damage are upsurges in inflation, coastal population, regional wealth, and higher replacement costs. These trends are especially impactful for some rapidly growing coastal regions along the U.S. Gulf and Southeast Coasts. With projected future coastal growth and population trends, in addition to any climate change influence on hurricane behavior, we may expect to see higher hurricane losses than previously observed.