Distributions and Trends of Death and Destruction from Hurricanes in the United States, 1900–2008

Because annual death and destruction from hurricanes in the United States can vary by > 4 orders of magnitude, common logarithms are convenient measures. If the data are stratified into years when at least one major hurricane (maximum winds > 49 m/s) made landfall and those without a major-hurricane-landfall, logarithmic mortality and damage in both subsets appear to be normally distributed. Combined log-normal distributions accurately represent the data. From 1900 through 2008, total hurricane mortality decreased with a halving time of 26 years. Consistent with previous analyses, historical damage normalized for population growth, increasing individual wealth, and inflation did not exhibit significant trends in either subset. Comparison between the complete 1900-2008 record and a truncated version spanning 1900-2000 shows that the effects of hurricanes since 2000, especially Katrina, doubled the expected loss of life and increased the expected damage by 10%, consistent with the relatively large statistical uncertainty in estimation of the model parameters. In the context of the model, the expected frequency of disasters that cause >$100 billion in damage is approximately three times a century and for those that claim > 1,000 lives is approximately once a century. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)NH.1527-6996.0000046. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil