Mark Hope

Despite recent events like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, the hazard storm surge represents is still underestimated as it is often the greatest threat to life and property from a tropical cyclone. To more clearly express the threat and the magnitude of storm surge impact for potentially significant events, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) has announced that it will provide an experimental graphical depiction of areas threatened by storm surge.

AIR’s historical U.S. hurricane catalog, which covers events starting in 1900, provides a robust view of landfalling and bypassing hurricanes. From this catalog, we can discern some interesting signals with respect to losses when historical events are simulated using current day exposures, notably the proportion of losses due to wind versus losses due to storm surge. 

"What if" scenarios drive many of the most important questions in catastrophe modeling. However, "what if" scenarios do not have to focus solely on events that may happen in the future; they can also reflect on those that happened in the past—and what their present day impacts would be.