Hurricane Florence Could Have $15 Billion Price Tag

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Hurricane Florence Could Have $15 Billion Price Tag

© NOAA

Before Hurricane Florence made landfall, there were estimates that it could cause over $100 billion in damage, which would make it among the most costly hurricanes in history. It was a Category 4 hurricane when these estimates reached their peaks. As the storm came ashore, it was quickly downgraded to Category 1. Despite epic rainfall, damage estimates have dropped to $15 billion.

Research firm Enki Research experts reported:

Damage is likely to total over $ 10 Billion dollars for the “hurricane” part of the storm. The inland flooding is another story. It could easily add another $5 to $10 Billion, depending on what floods and how bad.

The floods are not nearly over in the areas near where the storm hit the North Carolina coast. Some areas in the region have had two feet of rain and could get another foot or more. However, within a day or two, the storm is expected to march inland toward Kentucky and then swing east toward the New York area. By the time it reaches several hundreds miles inland, the amount of damage the remnants of Florence will do should drop sharply.

As the storm exits the U.S., probably off the coast somewhere in the Northeast, it will have done damage across the east central part of the country. But, most of the damage causing wind and rain will have ended by Tuesday, and the forecasts of a $100 billion storm will be long gone.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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