Industry-wide insured wind and flood losses in Florida from Hurricane Milton are expected to be between $17 billion and $28 billion, and that total amount of damage, including losses to uninsured property, will be between $21 billion and $34 billion, said an analysis from CoreLogic.
An assessment of the Hurricane Milton damage indicates that the majority of losses, $13 billion to $22 billion, will be from wind, which will account for the bulk of the privately insured losses. Coastal flood losses are expected to be highest in Sarasota and areas to the south such as Naples and Ft. Myers. This is coupled with precipitation-induced inland flood losses, which are expected primarily in the Tampa Bay area. The combined flood losses will account for $4 billion to $6 billion of the insured loss total.
These losses include damage to buildings, contents and business interruption for onshore residential, commercial and industrial property. The flood losses include damage from both storm surge and precipitation-induced inland flooding. Insured flood losses include those covered by the private flood insurance markets and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The losses do not include damage from the associated tornado outbreak.
“Hurricane Milton was an unusual storm, causing unexpected wind and flood conditions across the state of Florida. As Hurricane Milton neared landfall, it interacted with the jet stream over the southeastern U.S., causing the winds on the northern and northwestern sides of the hurricane — generally known to be weaker — to be atypically strong,” explained Daniel Betten, director of forensic meteorology at CoreLogic. “To add to the complexity, weather gauges in coastal Florida also measured hurricane force winds over Sarasota south of where Milton made landfall, essentially creating two distinct lanes of damaging, hurricane-force winds.”
Two major hurricanes making landfall in Florida in under two weeks will make for a challenging recovery for the residents of Florida and the companies that insure the buildings in which they reside, CoreLogic observed. While Hurricane Helene made landfall over the Big Bend region of the Florida coastline miles from Tampa Bay, there will be some overlap between the tropical storm force wind fields, storm surge and inland flooding leading to difficult loss attribution between the two storms. The overlap of severe storm surge damage in the Tampa Bay area during Hurricane Helene and possible wind damage during Hurricane Milton creates a scenario where leakage into wind-only policies is possible.
