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US at higher risk of hurricanes in next 5 yrs- RMS
LONDON
LONDON Nov 20 The United States, which has escaped hurricanes for the past two years, faces a high risk of major storms over the next five years, a respected catastrophe forecaster said on Tuesday.
Risk Management Solutions' (RMS) five-year prediction for landfalling hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin between 2008 and 2012 is "significantly above the risk averaged over the long term" it said in a statement.
The prediction was endorsed by seven of the world's leading hurricane researchers who met last month, although there was no consensus on the reason for the higher risk, RMS said.
The experts were asked to rate the likelihood of a range of statistical models on potential hurricane activity in the Atlantic over the next five years, including the possibility that the number of storms could decline.
The panel agreed that the period of increased hurricane activity that has existed in the region since 1995 is set to continue. But they could not agree whether the cause was natural cycles or man-made climate change, RMS said.
The catastrophe modeller's prediction is likely to mean that the cost of insurance will remain high for property owners and businesses in hurricane-exposed regions of the United States, despite having two relatively claim-free years.
RMS estimates that the average annual insured losses in 2008 are likely to be 40 percent higher than the long-term average for the storm-prone Gulf Coast, Florida and southeastern United States. For the exposed Mid-Atlantic and northeastern coastal regions it estimates they will be 25 to 30 percent higher.
Insurers paid out billions of dollars after the devastating hurricanes that slammed into the U.S. southeastern coast in 2004 and 2005. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the costliest ever hurricane, with an estimated insurance bill of $41 billion.
This year has so far seen 14 named storms, around the annual average since 1995. But for the first time, 40 percent of hurricanes reached the strongest category 5 status and two such storms -- Hurricanes Dean and Felix -- hit land.
Good luck played a major part in why the United States was spared the potentially catastrophic damage from these storms, said RMS.
A high-pressure weather system that usually sits near Bermuda was instead lying off Florida, which steered the storms southwards to hit sparsely populated areas of Mexico and Nicaragua.
(Reporting by Simon Challis, editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
