It’s hard to calculate the true cost of a major hurricane directly hitting Hampton Roads.
The impacts will depend on a long list of factors including where exactly the storm makes landfall, the strength of its winds, how long it hovers over the region unleashing rain – and how prepared residents are for all of it.
“Every weather event is unique,” analysts with Old Dominion University wrote in a new report. “Estimating the physical damage from a major storm is a journey in uncertainty.”
But they’ve attempted to do just that, projecting that a direct hit from a Category 3 hurricane would cause at least $15.6 billion in physical damages in southeastern Virginia, roughly 10% of the region’s total gross domestic product in 2022. That’s on top of a short-term loss of more than 76,000 local jobs.
The benchmark the team used is Hurricane Florence, a 2018 storm that devastated North Carolina, killing 42 people and causing roughly $17 billion in damages.
Bob McNab, director of ODU’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy, said their work was prompted by Florence, which was on track for Hampton Roads before veering to land in Wilmington.
“That raised the initial question of what would have happened if the hurricane had made landfall” here, McNab said at a presentation Thursday called “Pay Now or Pay a Lot More Later.”
“What would be the impact on the workforce in Hampton Roads, and how can we promote economic resiliency?”
Yin-Hsuen Chen, a geospatial data scientist and one of the report’s authors, said they used computer modeling to simulate a scenario where Florence made landfall in Hampton Roads instead.
The modified track has the storm landing just north of the North Carolina border in Virginia Beach, then slowly cutting northwest in a straight path over the region and dumping three feet of rain.
It took over a month just to run the highly technical computations, Chen said. The models were developed with a standardized set of tools and data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that generates estimates of wind and storm surge.
Norfolk is estimated to have the highest amount of structural damages at more than $4.6 billion, followed by Hampton, Poquoson and Portsmouth. Every Hampton Roads locality faces seven-figure damages, broken down in the report by amounts caused by wind or water.
Flood damage is highly dependent on the water level along the coast during the hurricane, ODU said. And that water level is rising in Hampton Roads due to climate change.
Analysts therefore ran not just a baseline storm scenario, but one where tidal waters are higher by several feet. In the latter, the total damage estimate more than doubles to $37.5 billion.
“When we're doing this scenario, we're kind of using the worst case scenario,” Chen said.
Such a natural disaster would wreak havoc equal to a third of regional GDP and “likely overwhelm regional, state and federal preparation and recovery efforts, reducing potential economic activity in the region for years to come,” according to the report.
A storm higher than Category 3 or combined with significantly increased sea levels would be so devastating that ODU didn’t think it was even worth projecting.
Job losses tied to the Florence-like hurricane are threefold. First ODU estimates a direct cut in jobs of about 20,000. Then indirectly, through supply chain impacts, the region would lose another 5,000.
The biggest chunk, more than 50,000 lost jobs, is tied to what economists call “induced” impacts. Reductions to household income due to uninsured losses would lower demand, which in turn hurts businesses and employment, including the tourism industry.
Lower-income households are expected to bear the brunt of monetary losses, especially those unable to borrow money from family or financial institutions. After Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017, officials saw a 20% increase in bankruptcies among credit-constrained households outside of flood hazard zones.
It’s been more than 200 years since a major hurricane landed in Hampton Roads. The 1821 Norfolk-Long Island hurricane brought at least 10 feet of storm surge and destroyed warehouses and bridges along the Elizabeth River.
“We have lived in sort of a bubble since” then, McNab said. “Numerous storms have tracked to the west, to the east, but we have avoided a significant Category 3 or above hurricane making landfall in the area.”
But warming ocean waters fueled by climate change are likely to increase the frequency and severity of storms, increasing Virginia’s chances for a direct hit over time, he said.
The region is also much more built up than two centuries ago, with more people, property and infrastructure at risk.
To lessen all these projected financial impacts, ODU urges more residents and businesses to buy flood insurance.
Traditional home insurance policies do no not cover flooding, and flooding in Hampton Roads often happens well beyond the bounds of FEMA’s high-risk flood zones that require flood insurance.
National research shows that uptake of flood insurance tends to rise directly following a storm, then fall again within a few years.
Researchers also urge local officials to prioritize investments in infrastructure that can better withstand heavy rainfall, winds and storm surge; provide incentives for businesses in less flood-prone sectors; and evaluate emergency response plans to help support displaced workers.
McNab said projected impacts and disaster recovery will also largely hinge on federal assistance, which has “become a political question.”
“One of the things that's complicating the interpretation of the results is that we really do not know if the federal government would provide the level of assistance and aid in a post-hurricane environment that it has in the past.”
