alt Hacker News> Florida was obliterated in 2024
That’s an huge exaggeration. FL was not obliterated in 2024.
Stats:
Total storms 18
Hurricanes 11
Major hurricanes (Cat. 3+) 5
Total fatalities 401
Total damage $128.072 billion
(Third-costliest tropical cyclone season on record)
Replies
swiftcoder • yesterday at 9:08 AM
The weird part of living near the tropics is we all look at that and go "not too bad a hurricane season". Everyone not-from-the-tropics stares at your list in horror.
Theodores • yesterday at 11:55 AM
I forgot that any exaggeration is not allowed on HN!
128 billion dollars is equivalent to 200,000 homes, or even more, which does not represent total obliteration, however, if that level of devastation happened in the UK, the only comparison would be what the Luftwaffe did during WW2.
➕ show 1 reply
That damage is like 10% of Florida’s GDP.
That’s absolutely nuts.
It’s also a lot worse than the pure numbers suggest because the damage here is taking away actual built up stock, so capacity for generating future GDP. And the GDP in Florida includes a lot of economic activity used to rebuild after past damage.
And all of this without Miami even being flooded out of existence. Miami can’t even build dikes due to the porous ground it’s built on.