Top 10 Damaging Hurricanes Within 50 Miles of Sandy's Landfall

From the ICAT Damage Estimator, here is a table showing the damage from the top 10 historical storms which had a track that passed within the NHC forecast "cone" of Hurricane Sandy's current projected track.

STORM NAME	LANDFALL DATE	DAMAGE RANK	CURRENT DAMAGE ($ 2012)
New England	Sep 21,1938	8	$  46,840,000,000
Diane	Aug 19,1955	12	$  24,110,000,000
Carol	Aug 31,1954	17	$  19,290,000,000
Agnes	Jun 22,1972	18	$  19,010,000,000
Storm 7 in 1944	Sep 14,1944	31	$  10,600,000,000
Bob	Aug 19,1991	66	$    3,620,000,000
Edna	Sep 11,1954	67	$    3,230,000,000
Gloria	Sep 27,1985	76	$    2,530,000,000
Donna	Sep 14,1960	117	$        850,000,000

Some notes and caveats:

1. The estimates include hurricane damage as defined by NOAA. Most importantly that does not include inland flood damage that may occur when a storm moves inland (that damage is recorded under flood damage). Several of these storms would have much higher damage if inland flood damage were to be included.

2. So when comparing damage estimates that you may see for Sandy to those here, to compare apples to apples, a rough method will be to take estimated insured losses and multiply by two.

3. These data are based on Pielke et al. 2008, updated by ICAT.

4. As you can see in the map at the top of this post, none of the historical storm tracks make for good analogues for Sandy. All of the top 10 were category 3s at landfall except Bob (2), Agnes (1) and Diane (TS). And all were in Aug or Sept except Agnes (June).

5. Large, damaging storms are not unprecedented in the second half of October, with Storm 11 (1944, ~$54 billion), Wilma (2005, $26 billion) and Hazel (1954, $24 billion).

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