Last year was an above-average year for hurricanes, flooding, wildfires and severe winds, according to the Natural Hazard Report from Corelogic.

“In 2018, the U.S. continued to experience damaging weather and natural catastrophes in high exposure areas, and in some instances, in regions that had been impacted in less than a year prior,” said Howard Botts, chief scientist at CoreLogic. “Hazards will always pose a real threat to homes and businesses and knowing exactly what that risk entails is critical to helping ensure sufficient protection from the financial catastrophes that so often follow natural disasters.”

Highlights from the report include the following:

Flooding

• In 2018, there were over 1,600 significant flood events that occurred in the U.S., 59 percent of which were flash flood related.
• Residential and commercial flood damage in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia from Hurricane Florence is cost an estimated $19 billion to $28.5 billion, with around 85 percent of residential flood losses uninsured.
• Multiple states, including Texas, North and South Carolina, Maryland and Wisconsin, experienced 1,000-year floods; several of 2018’s floods occurred less than two years after the same areas’ previous 1,000-year flood events.
• Six percent of properties nationwide are within Special Flood Hazard Areas, and around one-third of those have flood insurance policies.

Atlantic Hurricanes

• The 2018 Atlantic Hurricane season experienced 15 named storms, eight of which were named hurricanes. Two of these, Hurricanes Florence (Category 1) and Michael (Category 4), made landfall along the U.S. This made 2018 the third back-to-back season of above-average hurricane activity in the Atlantic.
• Around 700,000 residential and commercial properties experienced catastrophic flooding and wind damage from Hurricane Florence, where it is estimated to have caused between $20 to $30 billion in insured and uninsured loss.
• Michael was the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the Florida Panhandle since 1900 and the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It is estimated to have caused $2.5 to $4 billion in residential and commercial insured losses from the wind and storm surge.

Wildfire

• The number of acres that burned in 2018 is the eighth highest in U.S. history as reported through Nov. 30, 2018.
• Eleven western states had at least one wildfire that exceeded 50,000 burned acres; the leading states were California and Oregon, each with seven fires that burned more than 50,000 acres.
• The November 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California destroyed nearly the entire city of Paradise and brought damage or destruction to 18,804 structures.
• The Woolsey wildfire in the coastal community of Malibu destroyed more than 1,600 structures.
• CoreLogic estimates that the combined total insured and uninsured loss for these two wildfires is between $15 billion and $19 billion.