175 years of landfalls

Debby's wind was a footnote — its stalled rain flooded Sarasota, Savannah, and the SC Lowcountry, and most of that water hit homes with no flood policy

42% of Helene–Milton residential claims closed without payment — most flood losses had no flood policy behind them

Landed 13 days after Helene — insurers fought over which storm, and which policy, owed for the same house

The strongest Big Bend hurricane in over a century produced just $310M in insured losses — because so much of the region carried no insurance at all

Florida's costliest hurricane: 700,000+ claims, roughly 3 in 10 residential claims closed without payment, a surge-vs-wind litigation wave, and the SB 2-A overhaul of Florida claim law.

A minimal November hurricane condemned two dozen Daytona-area condo towers — and taught beachfront Florida that erosion isn't a covered peril

Sally dropped 2 feet of rain on Pensacola — and turned Northwest Florida into a case study in wind-versus-flood claim disputes

149,773 claims, $7.4B insured losses — 14% of residential claims still unpaid two years after landfall

1.1 million Florida claims and $20.7 billion in estimated losses — the storm whose assignment-of-benefits litigation explosion forced the 2019 HB 7065 reforms.

Ended Florida's 11-year hurricane drought — and insurers' first estimates put nearly a third of the loss in coastal flooding most homeowners policies excluded

Matthew never made a Florida landfall — and still generated 100,000+ Florida claims, proving a near-miss can be a full-scale insurance event

Hit a Panhandle still under Ivan's blue tarps ten months later — mid-repair homes turned into prior-damage denial fights

Largest NFIP payout in history ($16.3B) — and the wind-vs-water litigation that still defines hurricane claim denials

Over 1 million Florida claims, still being paid five years later — the reopened-claim wave that produced Florida's 3-year hurricane claim deadline

A court ruling weeks before landfall — Mierzwa — put full policy limits on the table for mixed-peril total losses; the 2005 Legislature rewrote the Valued Policy Law in response

Thousands of Charley-hit homes owed a second hurricane deductible three weeks later — the outcry produced Florida's single-season deductible law

Beachfront slabs from Perdido Key to Orange Beach previewed Katrina's wind-vs-flood fight a year early

Struck the same island as Frances three weeks later — adjusters split single wrecked roofs between two storms, two claims, two deductibles

173 Keys homes destroyed — many of them mobile homes — reigniting the fight over whether trailers belong in a surge zone at all

$2.1B in insured losses three years after Andrew — Opal's claims drove $117M in wind-pool assessments and swelled the FWUA

Bankrupted at least 8 insurers and forced Florida to invent its modern insurance system — the Cat Fund, the state-run insurer that became Citizens, and the statewide building code.

About 400,000 people evacuated the Southeast coast ahead of David — the first mass-evacuation test of the modern South Carolina shoreline

Eloise wiped out beachfront rows in Bay County and became the storm that put teeth in Florida's Coastal Construction Control Line

Less than 1% of Agnes's insurable flood damage was covered — fewer than 100,000 NFIP policies existed nationwide — and Congress answered with the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973's mandatory purchase rule

America's first billion-dollar hurricane — the loss that pushed Congress to create the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968

The only hurricane on record to strike Northeast Florida head-on — the storm insurers still use to price Jacksonville's risk

The only hurricane on record to bring hurricane-force winds to Florida, the mid-Atlantic, and New England — and the catastrophe-ratemaking benchmark of its era

A Category 4 core five miles wide through downtown Miami — 20,861 homes damaged — still cited as the benchmark for concentrated urban wind exposure

Its floods drowned 2,000+ square miles of South Florida for months and pushed Congress to build the Central & Southern Florida Flood Control Project — engineering in place of the flood insurance that didn't exist

Still the most intense U.S. landfall ever recorded — 892 mb; the dead were federal relief workers, and compensation came from Congress, not carriers

The lake dike failure that killed 2,500+ produced the Herbert Hoover Dike — federal flood control as the answer to an uninsurable peril, four decades before flood insurance existed

Burst the Florida land boom — and remains the costliest U.S. hurricane ever when normalized to today's coastline, at $200B+

Debby's wind was a footnote — its stalled rain flooded Sarasota, Savannah, and the SC Lowcountry, and most of that water hit homes with no flood policy

42% of Helene–Milton residential claims closed without payment — most flood losses had no flood policy behind them

Florida's costliest hurricane: 700,000+ claims, roughly 3 in 10 residential claims closed without payment, a surge-vs-wind litigation wave, and the SB 2-A overhaul of Florida claim law.

Dorian never touched South Carolina, but it closed the coast for a week — proving that business-interruption and evacuation losses rarely collect without physical damage

Insured wind losses stayed modest while uninsured flood damage ran toward $20B — and Nichols, SC drowned for the second time in 23 months, the NFIP repetitive-loss problem in one town

Matthew never made a Florida landfall — and still generated 100,000+ Florida claims, proving a near-miss can be a full-scale insurance event

NFIP take-up in the declared counties averaged about 5% — South Carolina's costliest flood hit the inland counties where almost no one had flood insurance

A court ruling weeks before landfall — Mierzwa — put full policy limits on the table for mixed-peril total losses; the 2005 Legislature rewrote the Valued Policy Law in response

Wind at the SC coast, a 1,000-year flash flood in Richmond — where the flood wall had taken Shockoe Bottom off the flood maps, so almost nobody carried flood insurance

Thousands of Charley-hit homes owed a second hurricane deductible three weeks later — the outcry produced Florida's single-season deductible law

The first US catastrophe to top $4 billion in insured claims — it exposed how unprepared insurers and coastal South Carolina were, and pushed the SC wind pool into its modern role.

About 400,000 people evacuated the Southeast coast ahead of David — the first mass-evacuation test of the modern South Carolina shoreline

The last major hurricane to hit South Carolina before Hugo — a 30-year gap that drained coastal storm experience from owners, carriers, and adjusters alike

80% of Myrtle Beach's waterfront dwellings were destroyed on the year's highest lunar tide — 14 years before federal flood insurance existed

No insurance and no government aid existed — recovery ran entirely on the Red Cross's first major disaster-relief operation, privately funded for 10 months

Ida drew 460,000+ Louisiana claims and $13.1B in payouts — 11 insurers failed and Louisiana Citizens more than tripled

Laura opened Louisiana's insurance death spiral — four hurricanes in 13 months, $23B+ insured losses, and a dozen carrier failures

Dorian never touched South Carolina, but it closed the coast for a week — proving that business-interruption and evacuation losses rarely collect without physical damage

Insured wind losses stayed modest while uninsured flood damage ran toward $20B — and Nichols, SC drowned for the second time in 23 months, the NFIP repetitive-loss problem in one town

Roughly 80% of flooded Harris County homes had no flood insurance — and 63% of Harvey homeowners claims closed without payment

A year after Maria, ~13,600 Puerto Rico claims were still open — the delay crisis produced bad-faith reforms and an insurer liquidation

Post-tropical at landfall, so hurricane deductibles were voided — then FEMA reopened ~142,000 NFIP claims over altered engineering reports

TWIA paid $2.3B on ~93,000 Ike claims, then thousands of lawsuits nearly sank it — Texas rewrote windstorm-claim law in 2011

Largest NFIP payout in history ($16.3B) — and the wind-vs-water litigation that still defines hurricane claim denials

Rita caused $18.5B in damage but only $5.6B in insured payouts — the surge that leveled Cameron Parish was excluded as flood

Wind at the SC coast, a 1,000-year flash flood in Richmond — where the flood wall had taken Shockoe Bottom off the flood maps, so almost nobody carried flood insurance

Beachfront slabs from Perdido Key to Orange Beach previewed Katrina's wind-vs-flood fight a year early

173 Keys homes destroyed — many of them mobile homes — reigniting the fight over whether trailers belong in a surge zone at all

About 400,000 people evacuated the Southeast coast ahead of David — the first mass-evacuation test of the modern South Carolina shoreline

Less than 1% of Agnes's insurable flood damage was covered — fewer than 100,000 NFIP policies existed nationwide — and Congress answered with the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973's mandatory purchase rule

Camille's surge denials produced the Mississippi wind-vs-water case law — Byrne, Lunday, Grace — still cited for and against policyholders decades later after Katrina

America's first billion-dollar hurricane — the loss that pushed Congress to create the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968

With no flood program until 1968, Audrey's surge losses were unpayable — survivors sued the Weather Bureau over the warnings instead, in Bartie v. United States, the first case of its kind

80% of Myrtle Beach's waterfront dwellings were destroyed on the year's highest lunar tide — 14 years before federal flood insurance existed

Windstorm coverage was so rare in 1938 that the storm drove mass adoption of the new extended-coverage endorsement — the ancestor of modern wind coverage — and it remains the return-period benchmark for Northeast catastrophe models

Fire policies dominated in 1900 — windstorm ('tornado') coverage was a rarely purchased rider, so most of the 3,600+ destroyed homes carried no coverage against the storm