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:
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.”
—Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
“If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)