Helene estimated to have caused billions of dollars in damage

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter reports on the historic loss from Helene, billions of dollars in total damage and economic losses.

Transcript

00:00I do want to bring in our chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter and you know John we crunched

00:05the numbers here and unfortunately the numbers are not very good.

00:09No it's a staggering toll. This is why AccuWeather was

00:13stressing how dangerous the situation this would be. We warned of the life-threatening flooding in

00:18North Carolina days ahead of other sources to help people best prepare and stay safer.

00:23145 to 160 billion dollars that's our preliminary estimate for total damage and economic loss

00:31from Helene's impacts and there were three epicenters right near the area of landfall

00:35with a devastating storm surge all that wind all the way up into Georgia and South Carolina and of

00:40course the historic and catastrophic flooding that we warned about in North Carolina.

00:45Let's put it into perspective with some other storms that have had unfortunately high

00:51damage and economic losses. It doesn't it Helene does not have good company in that regard. Look

00:56at this 180 to 210 billion dollar estimate for Ian and of course obviously Florence was 50 to

01:0360 billion dollars as estimated by AccuWeather. All these have been adjusted to 2024 dollars so

01:08you can see that Helene will become one of the most costly and damaging natural disasters in

01:16U.S. history and you know John it's this hurricane season has been a little bizarre as I would like

01:22to call it because number one couple of long track storms Ernesto, Debbie and Beryl occurring in the

01:29times of the year where you don't expect long track storms that's during the month of July and

01:34August and then September came around and we start getting homegrown development. Francine,

01:40Helene and also the unnamed tropical rainstorm that brought basically a tropical storm to North

01:49Carolina and when you look at it John I mean it's been a very very damaging hurricane season.

01:56It sure has with lots of impacts to people and businesses across the United States from

02:02various storms as you look at the list of them the economic losses continue to add up in what

02:08has been a very damaging season but we were concerned about that significant outsized impact

02:14from Helene and that's exactly what the numbers show. You look on the satellite this morning John

02:19we have a couple of storms we have Joyce we have Isaac and then we have tropical depression number

02:2512 that is going to likely become John our next storm and as we continue to go through the month

02:31of September things are starting to unfortunately add up. Yes and this has been consistent with our

02:37theme all along we've talked about don't let your guard down because with warm water and an

02:41intensifying La Nina a very busy second half of the hurricane season on the way we're in the only

02:48really in the third quarter now in a football game analogy so more time to go and there still can be

02:53further impacts. We expect Kirk this afternoon that would be storm number six during the month

02:59of September as we close things out and then let's really quickly talk about our next threat

03:05beginning late this week. High risk for development in the same general area that

03:11we had with Helene first developed there's lowered pressures clusters of showers and

03:16thunderstorms and out of this area between October 3rd and 6th we expect a tropical depression a

03:22tropical storm and perhaps a hurricane to form and lift north and once again threaten the U.S.

03:27coastline. Now does this look like an intensifying quickly rapidly developing storm it does not John

03:34but certainly we could be looking at depression or a name storm heading toward Florida late this

03:40week most likely Sunday into Monday. That's the latest thoughts from our team of hurricane experts

03:46we want everybody though along the Gulf of Mexico coastline to be monitoring the AccuWeather

03:50forecast very closely once again we are concerned about the corridor from Louisiana to Florida

03:55and especially should there be impacts in Florida and other parts of the southeast that are just

04:00continuing the rescue and recovery operations now this can become even more serious because

04:06we've just had such a significant natural disaster and of course Bernie a very urgent situation for

04:12the people in the southern Appalachians where people need food water there are injured people

04:17that are still needing waiting medical treatment a very very serious situation on the ground.

04:23AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter. John thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.

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