Good morning again everyone. Over the past day or so, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the effects Tropical Storm Fay has had on the State of Florida. As of early this morning, the storm had brought up to 30 inches of rain to portions of the Sunshine State. Consequently, there has been tremendous flooding. Brevard County has estimated about $12 million dollars in damages including nearly $3 million in beach erosion caused by the tropical system.

And, there is still more coming from this latest Atlantic storm. Fay, which is the sixth named storm of the 2008 season, is forecast to produce another four to eight inches of rainfall across the Northern portion of the Sunshine State, the Florida Panhandle, Southern Georgia, and Southeastern Alabama during the next 24 hours. Some localized amounts in these areas could be as high as a foot of rain. President Bush has declared a state of emergency in Florida in response to the devastation caused by the storm. Tropical Storm Fay’s effects have brought back memories of two devastating storms from the 1994 season in Alberto and Beryl as well as those of Allison in 2001.

Tropical Storm Allison was a storm for the record books. It produced an abundant amount of rain over the Houston area in June 2001. As much as 36 inches fell in parts of the area, which ended up costing some $4.5 billion dollars in damage. It remains the costliest tropical storm on record, and is even higher than some major hurricanes after taking into account the estimates in terms of today’s dollars. The combination of the slow motion of the storm and the tremendous amount of tropical moisture associated with it makes Allison very similar to Fay.

It will be interesting to see what the final estimates of damage total out to. Keep in mind, the population of Florida has grown tremendously in recent years. Couple that with the fact that the price of things such as property continue to go up despite the recent mortgage meltdown, and you have a scenario where we could see even higher insurance losses from this storm.