Hurricane Irene and the ICAT Damage Estimator

The image above comes from the ICAT Damage Estimator, an online tool that lets you explore our historical database of normalized US hurricane losses.  The IDE has a neat feature which allows you to select a current storm and overlay the projected path according to the current NHC official forecast (or underlying model runs) -- The IDE can then calculate damage from all storms that made landfall within that "cone."  You can also select all storms that passed within X miles of Irene's present position and compare damage statistics on that basis.

Here are some numbers from the IDE and links to the sources:

For storms that made landfall within Irene's 5-day official forecast cone:

Average damage: ~$14 billion
Median damage: ~$3 billion

For storms that passed within 50 miles of Irene's latest position:

Average damage: ~$9.3 billion
Median damage: ~$3.6 billion

I'll provide updates this week, meantime, please explore the tool yourself - ICAT Damage Estimator.

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