Ike Now Second Costliest Hurricane?

[Ptarmigan]

I happen to notice that Ike is now the second costliest hurricane on record after Katrina.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/nws-nhc-6.pdf

[Hurricanehink]

Yep, not adjusting for inflation it edged past Andrew. With inflation, Andrew is around $45B.

[mitchell]

It seems to me that comparing decades worth of natural disasters without adjusting for inflation is a bad method of analysis on a number of levels. Beyond the obvious basic flaws, it also leads to misleading trends...

It tends to create the impression that catastrophic storms are getting more and more frequent, severe and costly by skewing the damages drastically upward for recent events. There are legitimate issues embedded within the data such as improved building codes, more development in high risk areas, higher populations along the coast. Dismissing inflation makes these legitimate factors harder to evaluate.

My 2 cents (or 15 cents accounting for inflation)