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!
1,000
1.00Seems like there's arbitrage here https://manifold.markets/thepurplebull/will-hurricane-milton-be-the-costli
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.”
@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.
@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?
@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
I take it back that it's too early to speculate if professional Meteorologists are doing it already..
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.
@MarcusAbramovitch If there is information relevant to the interpretation of the resolution criteria can we please share it here?
@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 ...
"... the full extent of this event will take years to document - not to mention, to recover from."
Helene could be close.
https://www.inc.com/reuters/hurricane-helene-damages-range-between-95-110-billion.html
@ScottSupak Completely different from the Moody's number I saw a day ago ... (this cites Accuweather).
@ScottSupak After some googling I just learned that same accuweather increased their estimate again..
Putting it between $145-160 billion ...
Here is the Moody's $20-34 billion reference:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/news/UpdatedCostliest.pdf
Table 3b uses 2017 USD. Adjusting for inflation:
$150 bn (2024 USD) -> ~ $118 (2017 USD)
Only Harvey and and Katrina have met the damage record in the question criteria according to the source. You can use different cutoffs to get higher probabilities (less coastal infrastructure, etc), but the table goes back to 1900; 2017-1900 ~= 118 years, suggesting a prior on the low end of ~2%. Even if you use a smaller baseline for a cutoff (like last 25 years you will only increase it to 2/25 ~= 8%)
My own super sketchy model (https://manifold.markets/JakeLowery/will-the-2024-atlantic-hurricane-se-5j4lfqz5e6#m1qbjlhulfs) for seasonal damage globally puts a (middle) probability of exceedance of 7% for the whole year globally.