Alumnus Joel Gratz ('03) and team from ICAT develop hurricane damage estimator
ICAT Damage Estimator Revisits a $13.8B July Hurricane
Over the last few months Penn State Meteorology alumnus, Joel Gratz ('03 BS), and a team from a catastrophe insurance company, ICAT, have constructed a useful website to view past
hurricane tracks and understand how much damage these storms might cause if
they made landfall today. The main website is http://www.ICATDamageEstimator.com/. They invite you to have a look at the welcome video and investigate past storms or specific
areas of coastline and provide your feedback. More information about
the website and ICAT itself can be found by visiting http://www.icatdamageestimator.com/aboutus
Focusing on the current month of July,
Hurricane Dennis made landfall four years ago to the day (July 10,
2005), but another July storm
produced over five times more damage
than Dennis and showed that not all July storms
are so benign.
The "Middle Gulf Coast" storm of 1916 would cause
$13.8B in damages if it made landfall today: http://www.icatdamageestimator.com/damageblog
The ICAT Damage Estimator will be tracking all active
storms during the 2009 hurricane season and will provide damage estimates as
the storms near the U.S. coastline. You can find this commentary on
their blog (http://www.icatdamageestimator.com/damageblog).