Katrina Hurricane Facts, Photos

Katrina: $96 billion, Andrew: $26.5b, Charley: $15b, Wilma: $14.4b, Ivan: $14.2b, Rita: $9.4b

Hurricane Katrina, on which I did a retrospective yesterday, was by far the costliest storm in history. It's interesting to note that all but one storm on the above chart were from the past few years. This is a testament to the number of storms during those years, and rising coastal building. I'm not sure what the source of the data is, and the numbers (but not rankings) disagree with this table on our ad-supported site AND Discovery's numbers below, so we'll have to sort that out.

Other powerful U.S.-landfalling hurricanes in August include:

Carol (1954), Diane (1955), Camille (1969), Allen (1980) and Andrew (1992)

Katrina became so powerful due to vigorous inflow, strong outflow and deep, warm Gulf water.

Here are some highlights from a long list of Katrina Facts courtesy The Discovery Channel's Special "Surviving Katrina," which will air this Sunday night:

- Death Toll: 1,836
- 100-Mile Swatch of Devastation
- Damage estimate $75,000,000,000
- $105 Billion sought by Bush administration
- 70 countries made donations
- 1,300,000 acres of forest lands were destroyed
- $5,000,000,000 damage to the forest industry

There are a number of powerful photos on our Photo Gallery; a few are shown below. The Discovery Channel has also released a number of photos which I won't have time to resize before vacation. The photos are very powerful. I also posted a number of photos in yesterday's blog entry.