World’s Most Powerful Storms: Which Hurricane Caused the Most Damage?

Hurricanes are not just among of the world's strongest ferocious catastrophes, yet arguably the biggest financial catastrophic events in the United States, according to academics who published their findings in the journal PNAS in 2019.

Nonetheless, evaluating the most destructive storms is dependent on the metric used: often, economic penalty or civilians killed.

List of Powerful Storms

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 generally ranks highest in terms of financial reckoning. Conversely, the worst storm in recorded human existence slammed the Caribbean in 1780, killing almost 22,000 people, according to Eric Jay Dolin, creator of "A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes" (2020, Liveright).

Based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that expenditure topped $186 billion in 2022 values, dwarfing the $54 billion in predicted annual damages from all storms, as reported by a 2019 U.S. Estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.

The second-most expensive massive storm was 2017's Hurricane Harvey, which exacerbated $149 billion of destruction, mainly owing to rainy season that generated pervasive inundation all over southeast Texas, along with Houston, John Nielsen-Gammon, a senior lecturer of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, explained to Live Science.

Hurricane Sandy ($82 billion), which swamped New York Capital's underpasses as well as other regions in 2012, follows on the chart, after by Hurricane Ida ($79 billion), which inundated Louisiana and caused tornadoes up north in 2021.

Moreover, hurricane Irma hit multiple Caribbean archipelagos, particularly Puerto Rico, in 2017, inflicting a sum of $59.5 billion in residential and economic loss. Conforming to research released in the publication Climatic Change in May 2022, Typhoon Hagibis in 2019 cost Japan around $15 billion in destruction (2019 U.S. dollars).

Hurricane Maria triggered $107 billion in losses in Puerto Rico in 2017, making it the third largest on NOAA's record of the worst U.S. disasters. According to Jay Dolin, Katrina was the costliest storm among all times, costing over $125 billion in property loss when it ravaged New Orleans as well as neighboring Gulf Coast towns.

Hurricanes Throughout History

Extreme weather events have claimed fewer victims in the United States in recent times, mainly to advancements in preparedness measures and prevention methods like coastal structures that guard prevent lethal catastrophic flooding.

The Galveston storm of 1910, the worst catastrophe in US history, claimed 6,000 to 12,000 individuals in the then-popular tourist destination. The costliest catastrophes in regards of financial impact are most inclined to hit areas with a significant amount of expensive assets.

But even so, populaces in emerging regions are plausible to be more susceptible to extreme events because caution and typhoons protection technologies have not developed as much. A 1970 Bangladesh cyclone had the most deaths ever: an extraordinarily high 300,000 to 500,000 deaths occurred in the low-lying, heavily inhabited country, states World Meteorological Organization.

Flash flooding, a brief increase in water tier that may drown shorelines, was the primary cause of Katrina's damage. Based on the PNAS study, Katrina's damages ate up 1% of the US GDP, or the entire worth of products generated and operations given by a nation inside an annum.