The estimated cost of the damages incurred by Hurricane Harvey ranges between $70-108 billion with some analysts predicting an even larger amount.

Hurricane Harvey’s price tag is continuing to grow as reports of widespread flooding and destroyed properties are updated. While Harvey has damage that is still incalculable, most estimates show the financial damage exceeding Hurricane Sandy, which cost just over $70 billion, the New York Times reports. Hurricane Katrina is still the most expensive natural disaster to lay claim to the United States, ringing in at $160 billion and resulting in over 1,800 deaths.

Some analysts have even suggested that Harvey may exceed the price of Katrina. Dr. Joel Myers, who founded Accuweather, claimed that the storm could cost as much as $190 billion. Such damage would make a visible dent in the economy, even making the expected growth of the economy negligible. Myers also noted that his meteorologists expect the temperatures to climb which will make standing water a hotbed for bacteria.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which publishes the official government reports detailing the cost of natural disasters, is not expected to release their findings for a few months. A NOAA scientist explained to the Times, “Each day that passes, as the impacts multiply, it seems more likely that Harvey may ultimately eclipse the cost of Katrina, and it might not even be close.”

According to CoreLogic, a property analytics firm, up to 70 percent of property damage won’t be covered by insurance companies, due to the fact that only a small percentage of the properties affected by flooding were covered by flood insurance.

Since 1980, there have been 212 natural disasters that cost over $1 billion. And hurricanes make up a bulk of the most expensive natural disasters. The top 10 most damaging hurricanes cost around a third of the total damage since 1980.

RELATED: Harvey victims and their supporters may be abused by these cruel scamming techniques </s> (CNN) The toll that Harvey is taking is staggering.

It dumped an estimated 27 trillion gallons of rain over Texas and Louisiana during a 6-day period, says Ryan Maue of WeatherBell, a weather analytics company.

The rainfall has set a record for the most ever from a landfalling tropical cyclone in the continental US. Estimates put eventual total losses at as much as $75 billion . And the death toll continues to climb everyday.

"The word catastrophic does not appropriately describe what we're facing," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents much of Houston. "We just don't know when it's going to end." </s> WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Damages from Hurricane Harvey in the US state of Texas may lead up $90 billion in economic losses, the global risk modeling firm RMS said in a press release on Wednesday.

"Analysis by RMS, a global risk modeling and analytics firm, has found that economic losses caused by wind, storm surge, and inland flood from Hurricane Harvey could be as high as US $70-$90 billion," the release stated.

RMS Head of Americas Climate Risk Modeling stated in the release that the economic losses in Texas are still uncertain because of the ongoing rain fall and flooding.

On Friday, Hurricane Harvey hit Texas as a category four storm. The hurricane has affected mainly southeastern Texas, including the city of Houston, in addition to southwestern Louisiana. According to media reports, up to 30 people have been killed as of Wednesday morning. </s> The cost to rebuild areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey is rising and already on track to shatter records.

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All data is preliminary as officials struggle to assess the full devastation of the storm and its aftermath, but based on early economic models and simulations, Harvey is projected to be at least the second costliest storm in U.S. history, experts told ABC News.

Moody's Analytics puts the total predicted cost of Harvey at $108 billion in destruction and losses in output by the energy-rich region.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said that the cost of Harvey could require federal support "far in excess" of $125 billion.

Ballooning these costs is the fact that Texas's critical oil and gas refineries are still struggling to get back online.

Even as ABC News Meteorologist Melissa Griffin confirmed "for the most part the worst is over," she noted that flood waters will take weeks to recede and downstream rivers are still rising in some areas.

Chuck Watson, director of research and development at Enki Research, said the computer modeling he has done shows the total damage from Harvey not yet breaking $100 billion.

Offering a more conservative prediction, Watson estimates Harvey's direct financial costs ranging from $72 billion to $85 billion.

"It’s easy to overestimate the long-term economic impact because a lot of the short-term losses are recovered in the months after a storm,” Watson told ABC News. “Our numbers represent what total costs will likely be looking back a year from now."

Sacco and Matt Woolbright/Caller-Times via USA TODAY NETWORK

More than 185,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed as a result of Harvey, according to the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

Those numbers will certainly continue to "tick up," Tom Vinger from that agency told ABC News.

And approximately 80 percent of Texans lack flood insurance, according to data from the Texas Department of Insurance.

"There are 2.8 million residential policies in the counties on our list and 516,295 federal flood policies," Stephanie Goodman from the Texas Department of Insurance told ABC News. "These numbers start to give you a sense of how many homeowners in the area won't have coverage for most of the damage to their homes."

"That's the second wave of tragedy," Goodman added.

Thomas B. Shea/AFP via Getty Images

In terms of how Harvey stacks up against other storms, Harvey is still estimated to cost less than Hurricane Katrina, which caused $118 billion in damage when it hit New Orleans in 2005. But Harvey is projected to surpass Superstorm Sandy, which caused $75 billion in damage when it hit the eastern seaboard in 2013.

“Homeowners without flood insurance are eligible for FEMA assistance,” Goodman said.

About 440,000 Texans have registered for assistance from FEMA and the agency has approved more than $70 million in funds, Gov. Abbott said today.

Additionally, while most Texas do not have flood insurance, most homeowners are insured for wind damage. Texans have filed an estimated 100,000 windstorm damage claims and 100,000 auto insurance claims so far, according to Mark Hanna, a spokesman for the Insurance Council of Texas, a trade group that represents the state's insurers. </s> The world’s insurers have had to pay out a record amount due to last year’s natural disasters, according to research from the world’s biggest reinsurance company, Munich Re.

The insurance bill for 2017’s natural catastrophes, including the hurricane trio of Harvey, Irma, and Maria and a severe earthquake in Mexico, is expected to come to $135bn – higher than ever before.

And overall losses – which includes uninsured losses – amounted to $330bn from 710 natural catastrophes, the second-highest figure ever recorded, the German insurer found in its annual review of natural disasters.

The yearly average for global natural disasters is 605. Around 10,000 people lost their lives in natural disasters in 2017, slightly higher than in 2016 but much lower than the ten-year average of 60,000.

The only costlier year so far was 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake in Japan contributed to overall losses of $354bn in today’s dollars.

The costs are almost three times above the ten-year average of $49bn and eight percent higher than the previous records seen in 2005 and 2011.

Torsten Jeworrek, Munich Re Board member responsible for the firms reinsurance business, said:

This year’s extreme natural catastrophes show how important insurance is in absorbing financial losses in the wake of such disasters. For me, a key point is that some of the catastrophic events, such as the series of three extremely damaging hurricanes, or the very severe flooding in South Asia after extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains, are giving us a foretaste of what is to come. Because even though individual events cannot be directly traced to climate change, our experts expect such extreme weather to occur more often in future.

In the US — 2017 hurricanes

The US took the lions share of losses, at 50 percent, much higher than the long-term average of 32 percent of losses, driven by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

Hurricane Harvey is estimated to be the largest economic loss of the year, at $85bn. Hurricane Irma though was the biggest driver of insured losses, at $32bn.

The California wildfires though are only estimated as an $8bn insurance and reinsurance industry loss which is lower than many in the industry had been anticipating.

However it is a largely insured loss, with the economic figure only slightly higher at $10.5bn.

In late August, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas as a Category 4 storm. After landfall, the storm stalled over the state for several days and was able to continue to tap moisture from the very warm Gulf of Mexico.

This resulted in torrential rainfall of such magnitude over the city of Houston that, based on long-term statistics, should occur less than once in a thousand years.

A short time later, Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm (the highest category, featuring winds over 300km/h), blew a swath of destruction through the Caribbean before crossing the Florida Keys on 10 September and making landfall on the southwest coast of Florida.

Considering the wind speeds, losses in Florida remained comparatively moderate. But, given her larger share of insured storm damage, Hurricane Irma nevertheless ended up being the costliest natural disaster for insurers in 2017, with insured losses of around $32bn.

Hurricane Maria caused extreme damage to the islands of the Caribbean.

For example, on Puerto Rico, many production facilities, including those used to manufacture pharmaceuticals, were affected.

Infrastructure on the island, a territory of the US, was almost totally crippled; six weeks after the storm, three-quarters of households were still without power.

A series of severe thunderstorms in the spring, with accompanying tornadoes and hail, also contributed to the heavy US losses. No less than five tornado-hail outbreaks caused insured losses in excess of $1bn each.

Paradoxically, last winter’s heavy snow and rainfall in California actually fuelled this year’s devastating brushfire season. This is because, after a long drought, the precipitation had caused many plants to sprout and grow again.

The summer heat turned this increased vegetation into a veritable matchbox, leading to severe brush fires that lasted well into December.

Due to the high insurance density in some impacted suburbs, overall losses for the October fires alone were $10.5bn, and insured losses are expected to be around $8bn.

Unusually low temperatures in April caused billions in damage to European farmers since their crops had already grown robustly in an otherwise warm spring.

Depending on the region and particular fruit, harvests were up to 50 percent smaller than usual.

Another apparent paradox is that such events may start to occur more frequently in the future as a result of climate change: plants in certain regions are beginning to sprout earlier in spring, while the threat of frost often does not diminish to the same extent, so that the risk actually increases.

Losses caused by the late frost amounted to US$ 3.6bn (€3.3bn), of which only $650m was insured, given the low insurance penetration in the agricultural sector.

Some 2,700 people lost their lives following an extremely severe monsoon in South Asia.

The annual monsoon season, which brings the otherwise desperately needed rain, lasted about four weeks longer than normal in 2017.

The regions most severely affected this time were the Terai lowlands in Nepal, where almost half of the Nepalese live, as well as certain Indian provinces along the Himalayas. In some districts, three-quarters of the territory was under water.

The fact that only a small fraction of the US$ 3.5bn in total losses was insured contributed to the humanitarian catastrophe.

Is climate change to blame for the record insurance losses?

Governments around the world are working to tackle climate change, with the US withdrawal from the Paris climate accords spurring others on to do more to try to limit emissions.

US president Donald Trump has sought to undermine the importance of climate change, which is thought to appeal to his conservative base in the US.

Despite this the Trump administration released a report in November last year that warned “extreme climate events” like heavy rainfall, heatwaves, wildfires, and rising sea-levels get more severe and potentially result in abrupt, irreversible climate changes.

However, assessing whether climate change is directly responsible for individual events is difficult.

The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has begun issuing a special report each year assessing the impact of climate change on the previous year’s extreme events, according to a recent report in Scientific American.

Meanwhile, the intensity, frequency and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes have increased since the early 1980s, according to the most recent National Climate Assessment. </s> Tropical Storm Harvey bore down on Louisiana on Wednesday, pouring down more water after setting rainfall records in Texas that caused catastrophic flooding and paralyzed the U.S. energy hub of Houston.

The storm that first came ashore on Friday as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in more than 50 years has killed at least 17 people and forced tens of thousands to leave their deluged homes.

Damage has been estimated at tens of billions of dollars, making it one of the costliest U.S. natural disasters.

For subscribers: Why Harvey could spell the end of U.S.'s flood insurance program

Opinion: Why the U.S. wasn't prepared for Hurricane Harvey

There is some relief in sight for Houston, the fourth most populous U.S. city, with forecasters saying five days of torrential rain may come to an end as the storm picks up speed and leaves the Gulf of Mexico region later in the day.

Harvey made landfall early Wednesday and was about 32 miles (52 km) south of Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was expected to bring an additional 3 to 6 inches (7.5 to 15.24 cms) of rain to an area about 80 miles east of Houston as well as southwestern Louisiana, where some areas have already seen more than 18 inches of rain.

Several hundred people had already been rescued from their homes in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where floodwaters were knee-deep in places, Mayor Nic Hunter told CNN.

"We are a very resilient people down here. We will survive. We will take care of each other down here in Texas and Louisiana," Hunter said. "But we do need some help from the federal government, these homeowners and these people who have been displaced. That's going to be our biggest need."

Harvey is projected to weaken as it moves inland to the northeast, the National Hurricane Center said.

"We aren't going to be dealing with it for too much longer. It's going to pick up the pace and get out of here," said Donald Jones, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Lake Charles.

But nearly a third of Harris County, home to Houston, was under water, an area 15 times the size of Manhattan, according to the Houston Chronicle newspaper. It may take days for all flood waters, which have spilled over dams and pushed levees to their limits, to recede, local officials said.

City officials were preparing to temporarily house some 19,000 people, with thousands more expected to flee. As of Wednesday morning, state officials said close to 49,000 homes had suffered flood damage, with more than 1,000 destroyed.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner imposed a curfew from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m. amid reports of looting, armed robberies and people impersonating police officers.

U.S. President Donald Trump visited Texas on Tuesday to survey damage from the first major natural disaster to test his crisis leadership. The president said he was pleased with the response, but too soon for a victory lap.

"We won't say congratulations," he said. "We don't want to do that ... We'll congratulate each other when it's all finished."

Moody's Analytics is estimating the economic cost from Harvey for southeast Texas at $51 billion to $75 billion.

The storm has affected nearly one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity, sparking concerns about gasoline supply. The national average gasoline price rose to $2.404 a gallon, up six cents from a week ago, with higher spikes in Texas.

The unprecedented flooding has left scores of neighborhoods in chest-deep water and badly strained the dams and drainage systems that protect the low-lying Houston metropolitan area whose economy is about as large as Argentina's.

The National Weather Service has issued flood watches and warnings that stretch from the Houston area into Tennessee.

Harvey has drawn comparisons with Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans 12 years ago, killing more than 1,800 people and causing an estimated $108 billion in damage.

Among the confirmed fatalities was Houston Police Sergeant Steve Perez, a 34-year veteran of the force who drowned while attempting to drive to work on Sunday.

In Beaumont, northeast of Houston, a woman clutching her baby daughter was swept away in raging flooding. The baby was saved but the mother died, Beaumont police said.

Ruben Jordan, a retired high school football coach died when he was helping rescue people trapped in high water, the Clear Creek Independent School District said.

In all, 17 people have perished, according to government officials and the Houston Chronicle. Four volunteer rescuers also went missing after their boat was swept in a fast-moving current, local media reported.

U.S. Coast Guard helicopters and boats have rescued more than 4,000 people. Thousands of others have been taken to safety by police, rescue workers and citizen volunteers who brought their boats to help, local officials said.

The National Hurricane Center on Tuesday afternoon said a record 51.88 inches (131.78 cm) of rain had fallen in Texas due to Harvey, a record for any storm in the continental United States.

This breaks the previous record of 48 inches set during tropical storm Amelia in 1978 in Medina, Texas, the NHC said. Medina is west of San Antonio. The island of Kauai was hit with 52 inches of rain from tropical cyclone Hiki in 1950, before Hawaii became a U.S. state. </s> NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - Insurers are set to pay out a record US$135 billion (S$179.4 billion) to cover losses from natural disasters in 2017, the world's largest reinsurer said on Thursday (Jan 4), driven by the costliest hurricane season ever in the United States and widespread flooding in South Asia.

Overall losses, including uninsured damage, came to US$330 billion, according to the reinsurer, Munich Re of Germany. That tally was second only to 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami in Japan contributed to losses of US$354 billion at today's dollars.

Insured losses from weather-related disasters were at a high, making up most of the US$135 billion. Munich Re executives warned that losses would continue to escalate.

"Some of the catastrophic events, such as the series of three extremely damaging hurricanes, or the very severe flooding in South Asia after extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains, are giving us a foretaste of what is to come," Torsten Jeworrek, a Munich Re board member, said in a statement.

While it was still difficult to attribute individual weather events to climate change, he said, "our experts expect such extreme weather to occur more often". The United States made up an unusually high share of global insured losses last year - about 50 per cent, compared with just over 30 per cent on average.

Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall in Texas in August, was the most costly natural disaster of 2017, causing losses of US$85 billion. Together with Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the 2017 hurricane season caused the most damage ever, with losses reaching US$215 billion.

But that wasn't all. The devastating wildfire season in California drove insured losses to around US$8 billion. And at least five severe thunderstorms across the country, accompanied by tornadoes and hail, caused insured losses of more than US$1 billion each.

Mark Bove, a senior research meteorologist at Munich Re, said in an interview that losses jumped in the United States because so many of the disasters hit highly populated areas: the Houston bay area, South Florida, Puerto Rico. That was a trend he expected to continue.

People are moving to warmer climates, putting them in the path of hurricanes, and more people are affected by California's fires, he said. "And we don't build buildings to withstand the weather we see today, let alone what we might see as the climate changes in the next 10 to 20 years," he said.

In Asia, heavy monsoon rains that lasted about four weeks longer than usual killed 2,700 people and caused US$3.5 billion in total losses. The Terai lowlands in Nepal, home to almost half the Nepalese population, were most severely hit.

In Europe, unusually low temperatures in April caused billions of dollars in damage to farmers, shrinking some harvests by 50 per cent. The damage was especially costly because crops had already grown robustly in an otherwise warm spring.

Similar volatile weather patters are set to become more frequent as the climate changes, Munich Re said in its news release.

"Plants in certain regions are beginning to sprout earlier in spring, while the threat of frost often does not diminish to the same extent, so that the risk actually increases," it said. </s> Say goodbye to Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate.

Those storms were retired by the World Meteorological Organization from its rotating six-year list.

The criteria and that a storm be "so deadly or destructive that the future use of the name would be insensitive," and those storms reached that level after the destruction they caused, in areas such as Houston, Puerto Rico, Dominica, the Florida Keys and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The names they are being replaced with are Harold, Idalia, Margot, and Nigel. Those names will be used for the first time in 2023, when the list used in 2017 comes back up in the rotation.

From the National Weather Service, here are summaries of the retired storms:

"Hurricane Harvey became a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale before making landfall along the middle Texas coast on Aug. 25. The storm then stalled, with its center remaining over or near the Texas coast for four days, dropping historic rainfall amounts, of up to five feet, causing catastrophic flooding in parts of southeastern Texas. Harvey is the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history (after inflation), behind only Katrina in 2005. At least 68 people died from the direct effects of the storm in Texas, the largest number in that state since 1919

Harvey was most notable for its destructive and record-setting long duration rainfall, when Houston was buried under almost 3 feet of rain."

"Hurricane Irma was a long-lived hurricane that reached category 5 intensity on Sept. 5. The catastrophic hurricane made seven landfalls, four of which occurred as a category 5 hurricane across the northern Caribbean Islands. Irma made landfall as a category 4 hurricane in the Florida Keys on Sept. 10 and struck southwestern Florida as a category 3 the same day. Irma caused 44 direct deaths as a result of its strong winds, heavy rain and high surf. In the U.S., seven direct deaths were reported, and an additional 85 indirect deaths occurred, 80 of which were in Florida. Hundreds more were injured preparing for the storm, during it or in its aftermath."

"Hurricane Maria ravaged the island of Dominica as a category 5 on Sept. 19, and later devastated Puerto Rico as a high-end category 4 hurricane. It also inflicted serious damage on some of the other islands of the northeastern Caribbean Sea. Maria is the third costliest hurricane in U.S. history, behind Harvey and Katrina. Maria caused 31 direct deaths with 34 missing in Dominica, and two direct deaths in Guadeloupe. In Puerto Rico, the death toll stands at 65, which includes an unknown number of indirect deaths."

"Hurricane Nate crossed northeastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras as a tropical storm, then made landfall on the northern Gulf Coast as a category 1 hurricane. It brought rainfall that caused significant impacts in Central America, where media reports indicate that these caused 44 deaths in the region. An additional fatality in Panama was due to a “shipwreck,” bringing the death toll directly associated with Nate to 45. An additional nine people were missing in the region."

Report an Error or Submit a Tip to NBC12 </s> MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Nate are storm names that don’t bear repeating.

Due to the extensive damage these storms did in the U.S. and Caribbean last year, the World Meteorological Organization has decided to retire them as storm names.

Storm names are retired if they were so deadly or destructive that the future use of the name would be insensitive. Otherwise, names are reused on a six-year cycle.

Harold, Idalia, Margot, and Nigel have been chosen as the replacement names and they will used beginning in 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.

Including these four additions, there have been 86 names retired from the Atlantic basin list since 1954, when storms began to be named. The 2005 hurricane season has the most retired names, five for one season.

Hurricane Harvey was a Category 4 storm when it made landfall along the middle Texas coast on August 25th. The storm then stalled near the coast for four days, dropping historic rainfall amounts and causing catastrophic flooding. Harvey is the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history (after inflation), behind only Katrina in 2005. At least 68 people died from the direct effects of the storm.

Hurricane Irma reached Category 5 intensity on September 5th. It made seven landfalls, four of which occurred as a Category 5 hurricane across the northern Caribbean Islands. Irma made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the Florida Keys on September 10the and struck southwestern Florida as a Category 3 the same day.

Irma’s strong winds, heavy rain, and high surf resulted in 44 direct deaths. In the U.S., seven direct deaths were reported, and an additional 85 indirect deaths occurred, 80 of which were in Florida.

Hurricane Maria ravaged the island of Dominica as a Category 5 on September 19th and later devastated Puerto Rico as a high-end Category 4 hurricane. It also inflicted serious damage on some of the other islands of the northeastern Caribbean Sea. Maria is the third costliest hurricane in U.S. history, behind Harvey and Katrina.

Maria caused 31 direct deaths with 34 missing in Dominica, and two direct deaths in Guadeloupe. In Puerto Rico, the death toll stands at 65, which includes an unknown number of indirect deaths.

Hurricane Nate crossed northeastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras as a tropical storm, then made landfall on the northern Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane. It brought rainfall that caused significant impacts in Central America and caused 44 deaths in the region. An additional fatality in Panama was due to a “shipwreck,” bringing the death toll directly associated with Nate to 45.
Hurricane Harvey is projected to possibly become the second costliest hurricane in the United States's history, with estimates ranging from US$72 billion to over $125 billion. In comparison, Hurricane Katrina's total damage is estimated to be around $118 to $160 billion.