Hurricanes have cost Texas lives and many billions of dollars in damages, as tracked by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), an office under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. Since this season began, Texas has been hit by the second named storm, Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall near Matagorda as a Category 1 on July 8. Nearly 3 million electricity customers lost power as the hurricane swept across southeast Texas. The Perryman Group, an economic research firm, cited preliminary damage estimates in Texas of $1.5 billion, with the net impact potentially much higher.
Of the hurricanes with $1 billion or more in losses that hit Texas between 1980 and 2021, two are in NCEI’s top 10 costliest in U.S. history: Ike (2008, $43.2 billion) ranks ninth, and Harvey (2017, $158.8 billion) ranks second.
Costliest Hurricanes to Make Landfall in Texas, 1980-2021
Costliest Hurricanes to Make Landfall in Texas, 1980-2021
Initial projections for this year’s Atlantic hurricane season called for an extremely active season with up to 23 named storms, including 11 hurricanes and five major hurricanes (categories 3, 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, a rating based only on a hurricane’s maximum sustained wind speed). That projection has been updated to 25 named storms, including 12 hurricanes and six major hurricanes (PDF).
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Fiscal Notes consistently tracks the response to the economic impacts of Texas storms. We examined the aftermath of Harvey in a special edition, looking at the storm’s extensive damage as well as factors that helped offset the costs, including federal aid, insurance payments and an increase in business activity due to rebuilding.
A REVIEW OF THE TEXAS ECONOMY