Will a hurricane that strikes the United States in 2024 cause over $150 billion worth of damage?
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Jan 1
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This question resolves Yes if the total estimate of damage from a 2024 hurricane by the National Weather Service meets or exceeds $150,000,000,000. This would put such a storm roughly in the same league as 2005's Hurricane Katrina, adjusted for inflation.

If repurcussions and estimates are still volatile at the end of the year, up to six months (but hopefully less) will be added to this question to allow the estimate time to stabilize. This market does not require the hurricane to maintain hurricane status for any particular length of time, or to stay in a certain category during landfall, or for the NWS's estimate to include or exclude non-American property.

Feel free to ask clarifying questions in the comments!

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@parhizj No, we're focusing on the government total for the sake of comparison to past totals. The spirit of the market is that we do want to resolve though, so if there is some change to what branch of the state announces damage estimates (ie. if they change the name of the NWS website or have the department of agriculture post it first for some reason) then I would likely use that for resolution, as long as it appeared to be mostly in continuity with how hurricanes like Katrina were analyzed by the state.

Does the 150 include loss of economic output or just direct damage

@ChrisMillsc5f7 It's however the federal government summarizes the damage through official channels, which historically has been direct damage. We want to be able to compare the result to past Hurricanes like Katrina's official government total.

Should this resolve based on the estimate by NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information) rather than NWS? Or uh, possibly NOAA as a parent organization of them both. Somewhat nitpicky but it seems likely NWS will never actually publish a damage report and some other portion of NOAA will instead.

@Fay42 I have pinned a post I made 12 days ago basically saying that we will be liberal with a Yes within this kind of range.

@Panfilo oh thanks I missed that!

https://www.artemis.bm/news/hurricane-milton-losses-could-amount-to-tens-of-billions-but-uncertainty-high-bms-siffert/
Siffert of insurance and reinsurance broking group BMS explained, “Forecast models show uncertainty in Milton’s exact landfall, but its intense winds, possible Category 5 strength later tomorrow, and weakening but widening wind field raise concerns about immense industry losses.

“The damages have the potential to be between $10 billion to $100 billion depending on the wide range of scenarios that now heavily depend on track and intensity forecasts at landfall.”

In an edge case where two hurricanes are attributed an aggregate damage of 300+ billion, this market will resolve Yes even if information about which hurricane caused which damage is forthcoming/disputed. Likewise for 3 hurricanes and 450 billion, etc.

@Panfilo Edit: Nevermind, I see your intention now.

So I don't get caught out, can we get a clear ruling on whether you would accept the Accuweather estimates as "damages" under your definition (even though it includes economic losses etc)? (I don't think this makes sense but I have to check).

@parhizj No, we're focusing on the government total for the sake of comparison to past totals. The spirit of the market is that we do want to resolve though, so if there is some change to what branch of the state announces damage estimates (ie. if they change the name of the NWS website or have the department of agriculture post it first for some reason) then I would likely use that for resolution, as long as it appeared to be mostly in continuity with how hurricanes like Katrina were analyzed by the state.

Some models are now showing Tropical Storm Milton as a major hurricane into Tampa. This would be very likely to exceed $150 billion in damage if the scenario occurs

@SaviorofPlant Yeah, HMON has it going just north but very early still. If it lands in Tampa that might get to $200 billion; storm surge would be horrific.

isn’t it too early for this? Track uncertainty looks low from GEFS but this might be deceptive until the storm organizes more… Storm surge models don’t even look this far out

Edit.. maybe by tomorrow?

opened a Ṁ25 YES at 69% order

@parhizj Yes, very early still. HMON has been very good this year, so using as example of how powerful it could be.

@SaviorofPlant Re Tampa bay… 1921 was closer fit track wise but both came from the Caribbean rather than the GoM

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/lib/lib1/nhclib/mwreviews/1921.pdf

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/lib/lib1/nhclib/mwreviews/1946.pdf

@SaviorofPlant

I take it back that it's too early to speculate if professional Meteorologists are doing it already..

When I checked the tide predictions earlier today, it looks like the landfall timing could make up a difference of up to~ 3 feet. Still a lot of uncertainty in the ensemble tracks though.

Pretty much a summary of estimates below on Axios.

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/01/hurricane-helene-damages-35-billion

  • Moody's Analytics' estimate of Hurricane Helene's losses are in a similar range, of up to $34 billion.

  • Yes, but: Other estimates released in the past few days have exceeded $100 billion, but they may be including factors beyond direct physical damage and net losses for business interruptions.

    • The additional costs will add up but are difficult to calculate ahead of time and often aren't followed up on. These can include lost worker productivity, health care costs, excess deaths and other macroeconomic effects.

@DistinctlySkeptical please check discord

@MarcusAbramovitch If there is information relevant to the interpretation of the resolution criteria can we please share it here?

This is now a PLUS market!

@Panfilo Love it. I've been asking Kalshi for something similar for a while now. Like, NOAA has a "number of billion-dollar disasters" page, which would make a great market. Site's not working atm, but maybe you'd want to build one?

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/

My hypothesis here is that Helene has already hit this mark. One of the main features we've seen over the last couple of days has been a significant loss of communications in affected areas. As comms has been restored, reports of damage and casualties have increased. I think this is causing both this market and the Moody's report to underestimate the total amount of damage.

@meanderingexile Going to take a long time to get the estimate ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-helene-biblical-devastation-north-carolina-near-worst-case-scenario/

"... the full extent of this event will take years to document - not to mention, to recover from." 

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