Batten down the hatches: Hurricane season begins in less than two months. And if you listen to the experts, this year could be a doozy.
While initial predictions point to a normal or below-average hurricane season in the US, factors such as El Niño, rising sea temperatures, and infrastructure issues still create the potential for devastating storms and an unpredictable season.
Rapid intensification, which is becoming more common, can even turn a mild tropical storm into a Category 3 in just one day.
As one professor told USA Today, “You prepare for a Hurricane Andrew or a Katrina every year because it only takes one.”
Hurricanes can cause billions of dollars in damage. They lead to flooding, storm surges, and destructive tornadoes, which can wash away homes, stores, cars, and other property. They can also devastate a city’s power grid, affect agriculture, and impact gas prices. The deadliest hurricanes can also take hundreds of lives.
To identify the costliest US hurricanes over the last 26 years, we used unadjusted storm costs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and adjusted them to 2026 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index inflation calculator.
Here are the 15 costliest US hurricanes of the 21st century.
15. Hurricane Rita — $30.73 billion
Hurricane Rita, which made landfall in September 2005, is tied with Hurricane Milton (listed below) as the two most intense tropical cyclones on record in the Gulf of Mexico, per the NOAA.
What made Rita especially dangerous is that it came just a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina almost wiped out parts of Louisiana and Texas. While the storm turned out not to be as severe, it still caused flooding and power outages across the two states.
Rita also caused extensive damage to offshore oil rigs in the Gulf, which halted “all crude oil production” and “80% of natural gas production” in the US for at least a weekend, NPR reported.
The death toll from Rita, including evacuation-related deaths, was 120.
14. Hurricane Florence — $31.39 billion
Hurricane Florence was the first major hurricane of 2018. It made landfall in Wrightsville, North Carolina, on September 14 and went on to wreak havoc along the East Coast.
Residents of coastal towns in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia received mandatory evacuation orders. Flooding was widespread, making some major roads impassable for days.
Florence also caused tornadoes, leading to at least one fatality. In total, there were 54 deaths spread between Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and the most heavily hit state, North Carolina.
13. Hurricane Wilma — $31.50 billion
Fifty-two people died as a result of Hurricane Wilma, AccuWeather reported, after the storm made landfall in Mexico on October 20, 2005.
The storm triggered flooding and landslides in Haiti, causing 12 deaths. There were also mudslides across Jamaica and Cuba.
In the US, Wilma had the highest impact in Florida, with a peak of 13 inches of rainfall at the Kennedy Space Center, according to NOAA.
12. Hurricane Michael — $32.64 billion
Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle on October 10, 2018, a little less than a month after Hurricane Florence.
Michael was the first Category 5 hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Andrew 26 years prior — most hurricanes are downgraded to a lower category before making landfall, but not Michael, which was also the first Category 5 to hit the Panhandle, and remains the most intense hurricane to ever strike the US in October.
Michael also affected Mexico, the Cayman Islands, and Cuba as it intensified over the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm surge in Mexico Beach, Florida, one of the most heavily hit towns, reached 20 feet, per Weather Underground.
11. Hurricane Ivan — $35.65 billion
Hurricane Ivan stuck around for a staggering 23 days from when it formed on September 2, 2004, to its dissipation on September 25, 2004.
Ivan devastated Grenada, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and other Caribbean islands before moving across the southeastern United States. Ivan also spawned a record-breaking number of tornadoes, with at least 118 confirmed by the National Weather Service.
The death toll reached 124 people.
10. Hurricane Milton — $35.88 billion
Hurricane Milton, which happened in October 2024, caused billions of dollars of damage in Florida, with extremely high storm surges, more than 100 tornadoes in a single day, and 140-mph winds.
You may recall that people stayed at Disney World during this storm, and while the guests may have enjoyed being there, some of the staff felt differently.
“Everyone was in a rush to get out of there, and it was scary not knowing how the weather was going to be on the ride home,” a park worker told Business Insider.
Forty-two people died as a result of the hurricane. It was responsible for 15 direct deaths (12 in Florida and three in Mexico) and 27 indirect deaths that occurred during preparation or cleanup, the National Hurricane Center reported.
9. Hurricane Ike — $45.28 billion
Hurricane Ike, to date, is the second-costliest hurricane to hit Cuba, causing $7.3 billion in damages to the island, per the academic journal Annual Weather Summaries in Monthly Weather Review.
Haiti, Turks and Caicos, and the Dominican Republic were also affected by the September 2008 storm.
In the US, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida took the brunt of the storm surge, but flooding happened in states as far inland as Ohio. According to local Cincinnati outlet WCPO, 782,000 of energy provider Duke Energy’s 900,000 customers lost power due to fallen trees and power lines.
The hurricane left 196 people dead, including 113 in the US.
8. Hurricane Irma — $66.89 billion
Irma made landfall in September 2017, when it “pummeled” the Florida Keys, and led to record flooding in Georgia.
Before it hit the US, it had already caused extreme damage in the Caribbean, with 36-foot-high waves in Havana and at least 41 dead.
At one point, the storm was the size of Texas. It was wide enough that it could’ve hit both coasts of Florida at once, a rarity in hurricanes. According to CNN, over 5 million people evacuated the state, making it one of the largest evacuations in US history.
The death toll reached at least 134 people across the Caribbean and the US.
7. Hurricane Helene — $82.42 billion
Hurricane Helene, when it hit in September 2024, earned the sad distinction of being the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland US since Hurricane Katrina nearly 20 years prior.
Across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Indiana, the hurricane caused at least 250 deaths due to high winds (including tornadoes), mudslides, and flooding, the NHC reported.
Asheville, North Carolina, a city 300 miles inland and 2,000 feet above sea level — so, not traditionally at risk from hurricane damage — was decimated.
Floridians also experienced Helene’s wrath. Over 3 million homes and businesses were left without power. Oh, and they needed to avoid alligators that had taken over the roads.
6. Hurricane Ida — $88.84 billion
Hurricane Ida ripped through the Gulf Coast region in August 2021, especially in Louisiana, where it made landfall as a Category 4 storm.
However, the Northeast wasn’t spared either, with devastating flooding hitting New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and even New England.
Venezuela also experienced fatal flash flooding, leading to at least 20 deaths, per Al Jazeera.
More than 100 deaths were attributed to Ida — and a “frightening” surge in hospitalizations due to carbon monoxide poisonings in New Orleans, per NOLA.com.
5. Hurricane Sandy — $92.79 billion
Northeasterners will never forget October 2012 when they got a taste of what it’s like to live in hurricane country.
However, the damage from Sandy was actually felt from the Caribbean all the way up to Canada. Some 24 US states, from Florida to Maine, were affected.
But the most striking images from Sandy came from New York City, when the streets and subways were flooded, and from the Jersey Shore, where the famous boardwalk amusement park in Seaside Heights collapsed into the ocean.
In the US alone, 158 people died. Taking the Caribbean into account, Sandy’s death toll hit 254.
4. Hurricane Maria — $120.41 billion
Hurricane Maria will forever be inextricable from Puerto Rico, where Business Insider wrote Maria hit like a “nuclear bomb” in September 2017. The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, told MSNBC at the time that the island was preparing for “four to six months without electricity.” It ended up taking 11 months to fully restore the island’s power supply, per NPR.
Even two years after the storm, the damage was still felt heavily on the island. At that time, over 30,000 people were still living in shelters fortified with blue tarpaulin instead of roofs. The official death toll in Puerto Rico alone sits at an estimated 2,975.
Puerto Rico wasn’t the only place affected; Maria was also the deadliest storm in the history of Dominica and the US Virgin Islands.
In total, 3,059 people perished due to Maria.
3. Hurricane Ian — $124.38 billion
Not even meteorologists were prepared for the severity of Hurricane Ian, which pummeled Florida in September 2022. It ended up being the costliest hurricane in the state’s history, according to NOAA.
“The storm surge was unbelievable,” Max Olson, a storm chaser who has been through 13 hurricanes, told Business Insider via email.
With storm surges up to 15 feet and a high amount of freshwater flooding due to hours of rain, Ian wiped out hundreds of structures across the Sunshine State, left thousands without power, and killed 161 people, including 150 in Florida.
2. Hurricane Harvey — $168.12 billion
In the almost nine years since Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in August 2017, uttering its name still can cause a shudder. As we previously wrote, Houston (which was majorly affected by Harvey) was a “ticking time bomb” for a storm like this.
The storm generated at least 9 trillion gallons of rain, and Houston’s flat topography and outdated drainage system led to unprecedented flooding — some climatologists called it the worst rainfall disaster in US history.
Texas wasn’t the only place affected. Louisiana also experienced flooding and power outages, and the Caribbean was hit hard, particularly in Barbados, Suriname, and Guyana.
The death toll from Harvey was 107 people, including 103 in Texas.
1. Hurricane Katrina — $210.17 billion
The costliest hurricane in US history was none other than Hurricane Katrina, the August 2005 storm that all Atlantic hurricanes are measured against, even 21 years later.
Katrina hit 90,000 square miles of land in Louisiana, Mississippi, and other parts of the Gulf Coast — an area larger than the state of Minnesota — and flattened them.
New Orleans was completely flooded after the levees meant to protect the city from storm surges broke. It led to thousands of people fleeing to the Super Dome for shelter, only to wait days for FEMA to arrive with supplies.
It’s impossible to overstate the impact Katrina had on the Gulf Coast — according to an LSU report, 40% of the 1.5 million people who evacuated from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama never returned.
Over 1,200 people died due to Katrina.
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