The economic impact of Hurricane Helene’s deadly assault on the Eastern U.S. could total up to $160 billion, according to a report from AccuWeather.
An update to AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate increased this figure from the $95 billion-$110 billion that the outlet forecast late last week. It now estimates the economic fallout could be between $145 billion and $160 billion.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on Thursday as a powerful category 4 storm. Forecasters warned of “a catastrophic and deadly storm surge.” It was the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region.
AccuWeather said the increase reflected additional “grim” reports received over the past two days and makes Helene “one of the costliest storms in United States history.”
A man inspects damage to his house after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, on September 28, 2024. A report by AccuWeather estimated the total damage and economic loss from Hurricane Helene could reach $160 billion.
Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images
“AccuWeather experts have continually monitored information related to Hurricane Helene from a variety of sources, and, unfortunately, upon early surveying of the scale of damage to homes and businesses, the extensive loss of life, injuries, evacuations, rescues and widespread power outages which are likely to last at least weeks in some areas and other factors, we were compelled to increase our estimate,” AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jon Porter said in an advisory shared with Newsweek.
The update follows reports that the hurricane’s death toll has surged to over 100.
Helene has left at least 116 people dead, with 30 fatalities in Buncombe County, North Carolina, one of the worst affected states.
“This is the most significant natural disaster that any one of us has ever seen in Western North Carolina,” Ryan Cole, Buncombe County’s assistant emergency services director, told local news station ABC11.
AccuWeather’s Bill Wadell described the damage in the mountains of Western North Carolina as “horrific.”
More than a million customers across the southeast were without power early Monday. South Carolina was the worst-affected state, with 755,313 outages recorded Monday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, a service that tracks disruptions. In Greenville County alone, more than 200,000 outages were registered.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster previously said on X (formerly Twitter) that work was underway to clear roads and restore power, but he added that this would “take some time, many days in some places.”
Also heavily affected were Georgia with 580,771 outages, North Carolina with 457,941, Florida with 133,492 and Virginia with 100,584.
There were a further 31,975 in Ohio, 25,912 in West Virginia, 22,434 in Kentucky and 11,886 in Tennessee.
Helene turned into a tropical storm on Tuesday, after becoming the season’s most powerful hurricane by the time it had reached land.
An update from the National Hurricane Center late Friday warned of “record-breaking” flooding across the southern Appalachians, but said conditions would begin to improve Friday night and on Saturday “following the catastrophic flooding over the past two days.“
Flood warnings from the National Weather Service remained in place for many counties in affected states early Monday.
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