00:00Hurricanes are the most destructive forces on the planet, with the recent Hurricane Helene and the ongoing Milton wreaking utter destruction across vast areas.
00:08Much of their devastation is quantified by their burdening cost. So which hurricanes were the most costly?
00:14Hurricane Sandy, which is often called a superstorm, as it weakened and became a post-tropical storm before making landfall, struck the coast of New Jersey in Atlantic City in 2012.
00:24The high population density of the area, and the fact that the storm was 900 miles wide at its peak, led to $88.5 billion in damages.
00:32In 2017, Hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm, causing flooding and damage to hundreds of thousands of buildings and resulting in $114.3 billion worth of damage.
00:44That's roughly on par with Hurricane Ian, which was also a Category 4 storm. It rallied through Florida and North Carolina back in September 2022.
00:52Fort Myers was hit with ruinous force, with total damages across the affected areas reaching $118.5 billion.
01:00Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 hurricane, hit Texas in 2017. The tempest brought with it massive amounts of rain, leading to flash flooding and overflowing rivers, causing intense damage to the tune of $158.8 billion.
01:13And it's probably no surprise that Hurricane Katrina takes the top spot for the most destructive hurricane in American history.
01:19The 2005 storm utterly devastated Louisiana and Mississippi, with flooding, high winds, and even famously destroying a levee, in the end costing upwards of $200 billion.
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