AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter reports on the historic loss from Helene, billions of dollars in total damage and economic losses.
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00:00I do want to bring in our chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter and you know John we crunched
00:05the numbers here and unfortunately the numbers are not very good.
00:09No it's a staggering toll. This is why AccuWeather was
00:13stressing how dangerous the situation this would be. We warned of the life-threatening flooding in
00:18North Carolina days ahead of other sources to help people best prepare and stay safer.
00:23145 to 160 billion dollars that's our preliminary estimate for total damage and economic loss
00:31from Helene's impacts and there were three epicenters right near the area of landfall
00:35with a devastating storm surge all that wind all the way up into Georgia and South Carolina and of
00:40course the historic and catastrophic flooding that we warned about in North Carolina.
00:45Let's put it into perspective with some other storms that have had unfortunately high
00:51damage and economic losses. It doesn't it Helene does not have good company in that regard. Look
00:56at this 180 to 210 billion dollar estimate for Ian and of course obviously Florence was 50 to
01:0360 billion dollars as estimated by AccuWeather. All these have been adjusted to 2024 dollars so
01:08you can see that Helene will become one of the most costly and damaging natural disasters in
01:16U.S. history and you know John it's this hurricane season has been a little bizarre as I would like
01:22to call it because number one couple of long track storms Ernesto, Debbie and Beryl occurring in the
01:29times of the year where you don't expect long track storms that's during the month of July and
01:34August and then September came around and we start getting homegrown development. Francine,
01:40Helene and also the unnamed tropical rainstorm that brought basically a tropical storm to North
01:49Carolina and when you look at it John I mean it's been a very very damaging hurricane season.
01:56It sure has with lots of impacts to people and businesses across the United States from
02:02various storms as you look at the list of them the economic losses continue to add up in what
02:08has been a very damaging season but we were concerned about that significant outsized impact
02:14from Helene and that's exactly what the numbers show. You look on the satellite this morning John
02:19we have a couple of storms we have Joyce we have Isaac and then we have tropical depression number
02:2512 that is going to likely become John our next storm and as we continue to go through the month
02:31of September things are starting to unfortunately add up. Yes and this has been consistent with our
02:37theme all along we've talked about don't let your guard down because with warm water and an
02:41intensifying La Nina a very busy second half of the hurricane season on the way we're in the only
02:48really in the third quarter now in a football game analogy so more time to go and there still can be
02:53further impacts. We expect Kirk this afternoon that would be storm number six during the month
02:59of September as we close things out and then let's really quickly talk about our next threat
03:05beginning late this week. High risk for development in the same general area that
03:11we had with Helene first developed there's lowered pressures clusters of showers and
03:16thunderstorms and out of this area between October 3rd and 6th we expect a tropical depression a
03:22tropical storm and perhaps a hurricane to form and lift north and once again threaten the U.S.
03:27coastline. Now does this look like an intensifying quickly rapidly developing storm it does not John
03:34but certainly we could be looking at depression or a name storm heading toward Florida late this
03:40week most likely Sunday into Monday. That's the latest thoughts from our team of hurricane experts
03:46we want everybody though along the Gulf of Mexico coastline to be monitoring the AccuWeather
03:50forecast very closely once again we are concerned about the corridor from Louisiana to Florida
03:55and especially should there be impacts in Florida and other parts of the southeast that are just
04:00continuing the rescue and recovery operations now this can become even more serious because
04:06we've just had such a significant natural disaster and of course Bernie a very urgent situation for
04:12the people in the southern Appalachians where people need food water there are injured people
04:17that are still needing waiting medical treatment a very very serious situation on the ground.
04:23AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter. John thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.