Impact
The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 was the most intense hurricane to make landfall on the country, having struck the Florida Keys with a pressure of 892 mbar. It was one of only three hurricanes to move ashore as a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale; the others were Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which had a landfalling pressure of 909 mbar and 922 mbar, respectively. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the third most intense hurricane to strike the country with a pressure of 920 mbar, though its winds were not as strong as Andrew.
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the deadliest hurricane in the history of the United States, killing at least 8,000 people. The 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane caused at least 2,500 casualties, and in 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,500 people. In the 1893 season, two hurricanes each caused over 1,000 deaths.
Accounting for inflation, nine Atlantic hurricanes caused a damage total of over $10 billion (2006 USD), including three from the 2005 season. The costliest was Hurricane Katrina, with damage amounting to $84.6 billion, though in normalized dollars it may only be second to the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926. Of the thirty costliest United States hurricanes, ten were after the year 2000.
A 2010 study published in Natural Hazards Review, a journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, “Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United State: 1900-2005” (PDF), analyzed storm-related property damage figures from 1900 through 2005 adjusted (“normalized”) for inflation, wealth and population factors over time. The study found that: 1) Using normalized figures, hurricane-related damages steadily increased from 1900 to 2005; 2) Based on the adjusted data, Hurricane Katrina is the second-most destructive storm in U.S. history. The top-ranking storm in terms of property damage is the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, with losses between $140-157 billion in 2005 dollars; 3) While 1996-2005 was the second-most costly period for storm-related damages, the preceding periods of 1976-1985 and 1986-1995 were “anomalously benign,” accounting for only 10% of all storm damage reported since 1900; 4) Approximately 85% of all storm-related damages occur in the months of August (35%) and September (50%).
Read more about this topic: List Of United States Hurricanes
Famous quotes containing the word impact:
“As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.”
—Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)