Damages from Ian could hit $70 billion with Florida landfall
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Why should I, as a non-Florida resident, have to pay for any of the damages?
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Are you a US resident? 
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My kids are grown. Why should I have to pay for schools? Waaaaahhhhh!
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I use this tool to look at short term weather.
You can choose among 5 different forecasting models and none of them seem to support the dire predictions I’ve seen. It looks to me like landfall will be well south of Tampa and the sustained winds will not put this hurricane in Category 4.
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Sanibel Island and Boca Grande Island look to be in the cross hairs of all models. Sanibel was devastated by Hurricane Charlie in 2006.
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How much exposure does Berkshire have to the destruction caused by Ian?
Maybe they need better models? Landfall was indeed well south of Tampa, but winds were well into Cat 4, and arguably could have been Cat 5.
Here was the most recent NOAA report on Ian at the time of your post:
Hurricane IAN?
Notably, 155 MPH sustained winds, right at the border line between Cat 4 and Cat 5.
–Peter
We all need better models!
I suspect that damage estimates from a hurricane would scale with some function of wind velocities (sustained and gust), convolved over the property-value-density of the land, and integrated over time. But, this is as far as I care to go with that model.
As a practical matter, the measurements from ground-based weather stations are probably supplemented by velocities from doppler radar. Hurricane categories are based on sustained wind (over 1 minute) at 10 meters above the ground (Saffir–Simpson scale - Wikipedia) and the measurements reported at various airports tend to agree with the forecasts pretty well.
What’s reported by the news is generally the highest number reported in the past 24 hours.
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