Florida reported $122 mn in estimated insured losses from Hurricane Debby, with 59.6% of claims closed, according to the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR).
Residential property insurers closed 62.1% of 12,814 Debby-related claims, more than double the 6,354 claims from other business lines, which make up the second-largest category.
Florida insurers closed 59.4% of claims from other lines, which include fire, marine, auto physical damage, crop insurance, and more. Commercial property saw lower closure rates, with 24.5% of 593 claims closed. Private flood claims closed at 14.5%, and none of the five business interruption claims had been resolved.
Debby remains the only hurricane to make landfall in Florida during the 2024 season. It hit Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 1 storm on August 5 with 80 mph winds and made a second landfall in South Carolina as a tropical storm. The storm caused flooding from South Carolina up to Quebec, Canada.
Earlier in 2024, forecasters predicted an active hurricane season due to sea temperatures and climate conditions.
Hurricane Beryl, the earliest Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, reached 165 mph winds and made landfall in three countries before striking Texas.
Insured losses from Hurricane Berylcould have surged if the Category 1 hurricane had struck a densely populated Texas city like Corpus Christi or Galveston. Hurricane Beryl, the second named storm of the 2024 season, made its final landfall over coastal Texas.
Hurricane Beryl formed as a tropical depression over the central tropical Atlantic on June 28. It quickly developed into a tropical storm and intensified over two days, reaching Category 4 status on June 30, the earliest on record for the Atlantic Basin.
- The Extreme Event Solutions group at Verisk estimates that industry insured losses to onshore property from wind in the U.S. due to Hurricane Beryl will range between $2 bn and $3 bn.
- Moody’s RMS Event Response estimates U.S. insured losses from Hurricane Beryl to be between $2.5 billion and $4.5 billion. This includes damage from wind, storm surge, and flooding. A total of 50 fatalities have been confirmed, and preliminary damage estimates are more than $6.2 bn.
Insurers in the United States may take a hit of about $2.7 bn from damage caused by Hurricane Beryl
The storm traveled over 4,000 miles since the National Hurricane Center named it as a tropical storm in the central Atlantic Ocean.
In August, Hurricane Ernesto caused outages and flooding in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It later made landfall in Bermuda as a Category 1 storm, causing minor damage.
Colorado State University’s September update noted an “extremely fast start” to the hurricane season, leading to a well-above-average pace by mid-August. While no storms had formed since Ernesto, they expected conditions to become more favorable for storm development by mid-September.
NOAA forecasted Tropical Storm Francine to strengthen into a hurricane, threatening southern Louisiana with heavy rainfall and flash flooding. A storm surge watch was issued for Texas and Louisiana.
