Talk:List of the costliest tropical cyclones

How to best manage the billions?

So there are a lot of ways of estimating the cost of a tropical cyclone. What this article does is reflect how we handle damage estimates throughout Wikipedia - whatever they were in the year that they occurred. Sure, there is inflation, and then you deal with how currencies are traded, and sometimes countries fall apart and change. So what even is the idea of the cost of something? A dollar to a billionaire is very different than $1 billion dollars' worth. A dollar in the US is very different than a dollar in, say, the Central African Republic. That being said, many countries have a currency that is a dollar, or something close to it (Euro, Pound). Further, much as I hate to be US-biased, there has to be some metric to compare costs, and I don't think it is that unreasonable to have a baseline comparison to USD, so long as the original currency is also mentioned. That way there can be a comparison around the world, while giving respect to the many nations affected by tropical cyclones that aren't the US.

So, I go back to my original thought. What to do here? I contemplated something similar for the List of the deadliest tropical cyclones. I could list the deadliest storms in each nation, sure, but what's the cut-off, top 10? At that point, Bangladesh's tenth deadliest cyclone killed around 40,000 people. I thought the next 10 or 20 might still qualify as a list of the deadliest tropical cyclones, so therefore set the cutoff at 1,000. What about a similar cutoff - a billion? It could even be one singular table. That skews a lot of storms in the US, but there would also be plenty in China, Japan, India. Mentioning only the top few leaves out a lot of really costly and damaging storms, although the US's economy is able to sustain it. If we did a billion dollar list, then even storms like Hurricane Isaias, which was an annoying storm name to pronounce, was right in the middle of a really awful year, and really wasn't that bad, which is why that dumb name will be back, and doesn't really belong on a list of the costliest tropical cyclones.

So, maybe we need two articles? One might just be a list of the billion dollar storms. You could expand the List of costliest Atlantic hurricanes to one that is worldwide. In addition, maybe we make: List of the most damaging tropical cyclones by GDP.

When I was working on Draft:Weather of 2005, I realized that the sequence of four cyclones in the Cook Islands caused the equivalent of 14% of the country's GDP. And when I was working on Effects of Hurricane Ivan in the Lesser Antilles and South America, I found out that Ivan caused the equivalent of 200% of the GDP to Grenada. Compare that to Ivan's US landfall in Alabama. So most of the damage was in Florida, where the NHC estimated damage in the TCR at over $4 billion (out of $7.11B nationwide), so 56% of the nationwide damage. The NHC then doubled it (as standard for insurance to uninsured ratio), giving the US damage estimate of $14B, which they later rose to 18 billion, or about $10.5B in Florida alone. Florida's GDP in 2005 was $815B, so Ivan only represented 1.5% of the state's GDP. That's a lot, of course, but nothing compared to Ian at $109.5 billion, which was 10.2% of Florida's $1.07 trillion economy in 2022. I tried Hurricane Iniki. It caused $3.1 billion in damage to Hawaii, whose GDP in 1992 was $36 billion, so Iniki represented 8.6% of the GDP. That's a lot, but isn't 200% of the GDP like Ivan in Grenada, or Ian in Florida.

Thoughts? ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 05:22, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I added more examples below. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 05:49, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Storms causing more than 10% of GDP

• Hurricane Maria in Dominica (2017) (263%)
• Hurricane Irma in Saint Martin (250%)
• Hurricane Ivan in Grenada (2004) (200%)
• Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (2017) (87%)
• Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu (2015) (82%)
• Typhoon Yutu in Northern Marianas (2018) (61.4%)
• Hurricane Beryl in Grenada (2024) (30.5%)
• Cyclone Winston in Fiji (2016) (28.4%)
• Cyclone Waka in Tonga (2001) (28.3%)
• Hurricane Keith in Belize (25.1%)
• Hurricane Iris in Belize (21.5%)
• Hurricane Ida in Louisiana (21.5%)
• Typhoon Pongsona in Guam (20.6%)
• Cyclone Idai in Mozambique (20.5%)
• Hurricane Irma in Cuba (13.6%)
• Hurricane Ike in Cuba (12.9%)
• Hurricane Ian in Florida (2022) (10.2%)

Other storms I checked that were less than 10% of GDP

• Cyclone Gonu in Oman (2007) - 9.9786%
• Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey (2012) - 5.8%
• Cyclone Gabrielle in New Zealand (2023) - 3.3%
• Hurricane Florence in North Carolina (2018) - 3%

I like the idea of comparing the damage toll to the total GDP of the region it impacted. I do have a question though, what region should we use? In the list you added above, you used the state's GDP for storms that impacted the US and countries for all other storms. While this is fine for the storms you listed as most countries are mentioned are relatively small or US-State sized, not all countries are the same size. Tropical cyclones that hit China, Australia or India are not guaranteed to impact the entire country, so using the GDP of the entire country wouldn't make sense. So how should we define the GDP total? The GDP of the subdivision? The country? All subdivisions that the TC impacted? Still a good idea. RandomInfinity17 (talk - contributions) 18:13, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Exactly right. China, Aus, and India all have subdivisions. I think it should be GDP of the subdivision, except in cases when a storm affects the whole country (like an island country). Igor in 2010 had damage equivalent to 6.5% of Newfoundland’s GDP, for reference. Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 22:58, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Jason Rees (talk · contribs) and RandomInfinity17 (talk · contribs), what do you think of this table? ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 22:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I like that the same storm is split into different for each area it affected. One minor nitpick, the "Year" column should be a "Season" column to account for tropical cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere. Otherwise, good table. RandomInfinity17 (talk - contributions) 22:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Table

Name	Year	Location	Damage % of GDP	Damage (USD)	Yearly GDP	Refs
Maria	2017	Dominica	224%	$1.37 billion	$580 million
Maria	2017	Puerto Rico	87%	$90 billion	$103 billion