Hurricane Irene Damage Analogues?

[UPDATE August 27: This AP news story calls the ICAT Damage Estimator a "model" that "predicts" $4.7 billion in damage. Wrong (The $4.7B is the average of the  27 analogues as you can see in the image above).  The ICAT site is simply a tool to look at historical analogues and offers no predictions of the future.  The WSJ does a much better job discussing the issue.]

I've had a bunch of calls today, presumably following up from Nate Silver's post at the NYT, on potential damage from Irene.

I have used the ICAT Damage Estimator to look at all storms that fall within the spread of the various model projections (displayed above, as of 9AM MT) and here are the top  6 storms that come up.

STORM NAME	LANDFALL DATE	DAMAGE RANK	CURRENT DAMAGE ($ 2011)	BASE DAMAGE ($)	LANDFALL STATE	CATEGORY	WINDS (MPH)
New England	Sep 21,1938	8	46,160,000,000	306,000,000	NY	2	100
Carol	Aug 31,1954	16	19,240,000,000	460,000,000	NY	2	100
Agnes	Jun 22,1972	18	18,880,000,000	2,000,000,000	NY	TS	65
Storm 7 in 1944	Sep 14,1944	31	10,670,000,000	90,000,000	NY	1	85
Storm 7 in 1944	Sep 14,1944	36	8,320,000,000	10,000,000	NC	2	105
Storm 8 in 1933	Aug 23,1933	52	4,880,000,000	27,000,000	NC	1	80

None of the storms is really a good analogue. We should expect to see damage along the entire eastern seaboard, as well as a considerable amount of damage from inland flooding (not included in these numbers).

It wouldn't be anything more than a guess to speculate at this point on Irene's total impact, but it does seem safe to say that it's effects will be widespread and the damage total considerable.

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