wxman57 wrote:List of costliest U.S. cyclones has been updated. Normalized to 2017 dollars, Harvey is second to Katrina ($125 billion vs. $160 billion) and Irma is in 4th place, just above Andrew (92). That's for the contiguous U.S. states. If you include PR and USVI, then Maria ranks 3rd with $90 billion in damage and Irma drops to 5th behind Sandy.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/news/UpdatedCostliest.pdf
Based on that list, the NHC seems to be set to keep Irma and Maria as Cat-4 cyclones for their respective landfalls in FL and PR. (Note that the SSHS category for each is "4.") I'm assuming that, since the previous version of the list (2010) was completed post-TCRs, the categories herein should reflect the storms' designations at landfall in the soon-to-be-released TCRs for Irma and Maria. If this is the case, then 2017 is officially the only Atlantic season on record to feature two Cat-4+ landfalls in the lower forty-eight states. It is also the first year since 1992 to feature three or more Cat-4+ hits nationwide, inclusive of territories in both the Atlantic and Pacific; besides Andrew, 1992 featured Iniki in HI and Typhoon Omar in Guam. Final note: no other season on record featured three of the top-five costliest U.S. hurricanes at once. That alone makes 2017 one for the records.