After a week of heavy rains and additional flooding, the Moody’s damage estimates for Hurricane Florence have risen to between $38 and 50 billion, making it the seventh most costly storm in recent history.
Earlier, Moody’s had set the damage estimates at between $17 and $22 billion, but said they could significantly rise. They did.
Despite the damage, the storm was less severe than three other major storms in the last year.
Harvey’s tally reached $133.5 billion; Maria’s $120 billion; and Irma’s $84.2 billion, Moody’s says, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
After a week of heavy rains and record flooding, initial estimates for the damage that Florence wrought on the Carolinas rank the storm among history’s top hurricanes, but far below last year’s trio of powerful cyclones.
Moody’s Analytics on Friday estimated the economic cost of Florence to be between $38 billion and $50 billion including damage to property, vehicle losses, and lost output. At the upper end of that range, Florence would rank seventh among the biggest storms, just after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing Moody’s.