Hurricanes are the most destructive forces on the planet, with the recent Hurricane Helene and the ongoing Milton wreaking utter destruction across vast areas. Much of their devastation is quantified by their burdening cost, so which hurricanes were the most costly? Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
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00:00Hurricanes are the most destructive forces on the planet, with the recent Hurricane Helene and the ongoing Milton wreaking utter destruction across vast areas.
00:08Much of their devastation is quantified by their burdening cost. So which hurricanes were the most costly?
00:14Hurricane Sandy, which is often called a superstorm, as it weakened and became a post-tropical storm before making landfall, struck the coast of New Jersey in Atlantic City in 2012.
00:24The high population density of the area, and the fact that the storm was 900 miles wide at its peak, led to $88.5 billion in damages.
00:32In 2017, Hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm, causing flooding and damage to hundreds of thousands of buildings and resulting in $114.3 billion worth of damage.
00:44That's roughly on par with Hurricane Ian, which was also a Category 4 storm. It rallied through Florida and North Carolina back in September 2022.
00:52Fort Myers was hit with ruinous force, with total damages across the affected areas reaching $118.5 billion.
01:00Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 hurricane, hit Texas in 2017. The tempest brought with it massive amounts of rain, leading to flash flooding and overflowing rivers, causing intense damage to the tune of $158.8 billion.
01:13And it's probably no surprise that Hurricane Katrina takes the top spot for the most destructive hurricane in American history.
01:19The 2005 storm utterly devastated Louisiana and Mississippi, with flooding, high winds, and even famously destroying a levee, in the end costing upwards of $200 billion.