Alumnus Joel Gratz ('03) and team from ICAT develop hurricane damage estimator

ICAT Damage Estimator Revisits a $13.8B July Hurricane
Over the last few months Penn State Meteorology alumnus, Joel Gratz ('03 BS), and a team from a catastrophe insurance company, ICAT, have constructed a useful website to view past hurricane tracks and understand how much damage these storms might cause if they made landfall today.  The main website is http://www.ICATDamageEstimator.com/.  They invite you to have a look at the welcome video and investigate past storms or specific areas of coastline and provide your feedback.  More information about the website and ICAT itself can be found by visiting http://www.icatdamageestimator.com/aboutus
 
Focusing on the current month of July, Hurricane Dennis made landfall four years ago to the day (July 10, 2005), but another July storm produced over five times more damage than Dennis and showed that not all July storms are so benign.  The "Middle Gulf Coast" storm of 1916 would cause $13.8B in damages if it made landfall today: http://www.icatdamageestimator.com/damageblog
 
The ICAT Damage Estimator will be tracking all active storms during the 2009 hurricane season and will provide damage estimates as the storms near the U.S. coastline.  You can find this commentary on their blog (http://www.icatdamageestimator.com/damageblog).