Editorial: Destructive hurricanes this year highlight the need to fund resilience

The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press Editorial Board, The Virginian-Pilot on Dec 6, 2024

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The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season ended on Sunday. For many in the eastern United States, who endured the devastating destruction caused by powerful storms this year, that’s not a moment too soon.

This year’s hurricane season was uncommon in many ways, but it also followed a pattern in recent years of the Atlantic producing more powerful, more dangerous storms that strengthen far faster than before. This is our new reality and it demonstrates the urgent need to substantially invest in resilience to protect Hampton Roads from future calamity.

Once again, our region can breathe easy after another year without experiencing a direct strike from a powerful hurricane. Hampton Roads endured limited rainfall from a few storms, but nothing major and certainly nothing terribly destructive.

Others were not so fortunate.

In what was expected to be an above-average year for storms, the Atlantic produced 18 named systems (meaning windspeeds of 39 mph or greater), 11 hurricanes (74 mph or greater) and five major hurricanes (111 mph or greater). Most of these mercifully remained well offshore, but five made landfall, including two that struck the United States as major hurricanes.

While that was in keeping with most pre-season predictions, the timing of those storms was not as researchers expected. This year began with Hurricane Beryl in June, the earliest category 5 storm on record, before a lull in what is traditionally the heart of the season, late July to early September.

Then they came, one storm after another, throughout September and October. Two of those hurricanes, Helene and Milton, intensified with unprecedented rapidity — strengthening that researchers say is fueled by climate change.

Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend as a category 4 storm, and delivered unprecedented rainfall and widespread, catastrophic flooding to communities throughout the southern Appalachian mountains. Whole towns were washed away and Helene stands as the deadliest U.S. hurricane since Katrina in 2005.

Milton also struck Florida, as a category 3 storm, and the storm surge delivered a painful blow to Gulf-side communities already reeling from Helene’s destruction. It gained 90 mph of windspeed in a 24-hour period, the most on record, and spawned dozens of tornadoes.

Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach told Bloomberg News this was “the strangest hyperactive season on record.” AccuWeather estimates the total economic loss of the season is at least $500 billion.

That number climbs higher each year as at-risk communities allow construction in areas prone to storms and fail to invest in the resilience needed to protect coastal residents. The United States spends heavily in the aftermath of hurricanes and comparatively less for measures that would reduce a storm’s destructive fury when it makes landfall.

In Hampton Roads, for instance, the cost of a category 3 storm making landfall was estimated by Old Dominion University researchers to be about $40 billion. Low-lying areas would face a dangerous storm surge and even inland residents could see widespread flooding. It’s no stretch to say such a storm would radically change how we live and work here. Recovery would take years.

That’s why the federal government, states and communities would do well to invest in protective measures long before a storm threatens. Hampton Roads cities have been working feverishly toward that end, with plans in the works for extensive defenses and flooding mitigation, but progress cannot come soon enough.

The situation also makes a strong case for reforming how to handle recovery in the aftermath of storms. It’s not enough to build back the way things were, and federal policy should continue to emphasize resilience when helping communities in the wake of devastating storms.

That is more practical in some places than in others, but strengthening vulnerable communities when there is an opportunity to do so will help reduce the staggering, and rising, costs of storm recovery.

Hampton Roads escaped another year without a massive storm, but we know our luck may soon run out. Preparation is critical and there’s not a moment to waste.

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