Hurricane Helene's economic damage hits top five

Plus, the entrepreneurial energy behind the chaos of NY Climate Week

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The 202nd Heavy Operational Repair Squadron engineers of the Florida Air National Guard clear roads in Keaton Beach, Fla. after Hurricane Helene on Friday. Photo: U.S. Air National Guard/Staff Sgt. Jacob Hancock.

The economic devastation caused by Hurricane Helene this past weekend will likely place the storm among the top five most-damaging hurricanes in U.S. history, according to preliminary estimates, with four of the top five in the past 12 years.

The ripple effects of these storms, which are increasing in power, will be felt across the economy and the financial markets. Few people have flood insurance and flooding is what caused most of the damage as Helene raged across the Carolinas and Tennessee after walloping Florida.

The ominous context is that Helene, which hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, is the eighth Cat 4 to hit the U.S. in the past eight years. That’s as many as previously hit in the half century before that, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). The storms are indeed getting worse.