With 335,000 insurance claims representing $1.9 billion in property losses, Hurricane Irma already has exceeded the claims and losses from the two hurricanes that pummeled Florida last year, the state Office of Insurance Regulation reported Monday.
Preliminary data on the total cost of damage caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is finally coming in, and analysts are projecting hundreds of billions in losses thanks to the damage caused by both weather events.
Insurance claims are already pouring in from policyholders with properties damaged by Hurricane Irma. The United States mainland sustained about $18 billion of insured loss, with the majority of damage seen in Florida, followed by Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama, according to catastrophe modelling firm Karen Clark & Co.
Allstate announced Tuesday it had provided automated hail estimating to victims of a recent Colorado hailstorm, the first of the nation’s Big 4 insurers to offer the new technology on the ground.
First Harvey, then Irma and now ... Jose? Hurricane Jose was 840 miles east of Florida early Wednesday, with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph, making it a Category 1 storm."Jose looping over the southwest Atlantic between the Bahamas and Bermuda," the National Hurricane Center said.
In the worst tidal surge since Hurricane Hugo, Irma’s wide, whirling bands thrashed coastal South Carolina on Monday with stinging rains and punishing floods that put vast swaths of the Lowcountry under water.
The full breadth of Hurricane Irma’s catastrophic attack on the Florida Keys is just now starting to emerge. Two days after Irma made landfall there, authorities and residents were finally able to reach some of the islands Tuesday.
At 80 miles wide, with 155 mile per hour winds, Hurricane Irma is terrifying in its perfection, with warm, deep water and minimal wind shear helping it along.
All eyes are on Hurricane Irma as it rampages through the Caribbean, but it’s not alone. Tropical storms Jose and Katia strengthened Wednesday afternoon, bringing the number of hurricanes churning in the Atlantic basin to three.
A tropical wave in the eastern Atlantic Ocean strengthened into a tropical storm Wednesday morning and has been officially named Irma.<br />Forecasters from the National Hurricane Center said Irma poses no immediate threat to any land but is expected to strengthen as it continues its westward track across the Atlantic.
Alabama officials, like state and local leaders around the country, expect disaster recovery costs to continue to grow as people live in vulnerable areas and climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.
Forecasters say the Atlantic could see another above-normal hurricane season in 2017. Forecasters predicted 11-17 named storms, five to nine hurricanes and two to four hurricanes could be "major" with sustained winds of at least 111 mph.
