Hurricane Laura is one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US Gulf Coast, but its path avoided major cities such as Houston and New Orleans, causing less damage — to people and their towns — than initially feared.

According to the latest forecast from Colorado State University (CSU), it’s going to be a busy hurricane season, and we’ve already seen evidence of that along the East and Gulf Coasts.

Hurricane Laura made landfall in Louisiana near the Texas border early Thursday as a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph.

Hurricane Laura was expected to rapidly strengthen to a Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday on a steady track to hit the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast after dark, causing catastrophic damage, the National Hurricane Center said.

Residents in Galveston and Port Arthur, Texas, were ordered to evacuate as Hurricane Laura strengthens in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm is forecast to make landfall Wednesday night as a major Category 3 hurricane with winds of up to 115 mph in eastern Texas.

Heavy rains from Tropical Storm Marco soaked portions of the Gulf Coast on Monday, one of two systems threatening a historic one-two punch in the region.

On July 4, 2019, Californians were preparing for a typical festivity — fireworks, barbeques, pool parties — when their homes started to shake. Stress on fault lines near Ridgecrest, Calif. had become too much, and the fault slipped.

Tropical Storm Josephine formed in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, hitting the earliest benchmark of a J-named storm on record, another sign the Atlantic hurricane season is more active than usual, forecasters said.

DBRS Morningstar has offered commentary on the current US hurricane season, saying that not only will the season likely see a lot of storm activity, but the resulting insurance claims made will “add to insurers’ woes.”

The U.S. could be in for an "extremely active" Atlantic hurricane season this year, possibly "one of the busiest on record," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Thursday.

Swiss Re today reported COVID-19 claims and reserves totalling $2.5 billion across the Group, resulting in a net loss of $1.1 billion in the first half of 2020 (all figures in U.S. dollars).

Chubb Chairman and CEO Evan Greenberg told CNBC on Thursday the insurance industry is confronting an event like no other when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic. “It has no time limit, and it has no geographic bounds,” Greenberg said on “Squawk Box.”

Karen Clark & Company (KCC) has estimated that insurance industry losses from Hurricane Hanna, the first hurricane of the 2020 North Atlantic hurricane season, will near $350 million.

Eberl Claims Service and US Adjusting Services have announced that they have combined their business operations. Eberl will acquire certain assets and the business of US Adjusting Services, and both businesses will operate together.

The upcoming Atlantic hurricane season and California wildfires in the autumn may be more extreme than usual, the German reinsurer Munich Re said on Thursday.