Hurricanes & a growing Gulf Coast

The Atlantic-Gulf Coast 2019 hurricane season got off to a quick start this past weekend with the first of the season, Cat 1 Barry, which made landfall on July 13 in Louisiana. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastline communities had their faces mussed up with 13 hurricanes that caused more than $10B in damage from 2000-17. Seven occurred in just two years (Ivan: 2004 and Katrina: 2005). Coastline counties are grouped into Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Pacific regions. The number of people living in some of these vulnerable coastline regions is also growing. About 94.7M people - about 29.1% of U.S. population - lived in coastline counties in 2017 – up 15.3 percent since 2000. The two regions are most vulnerable to hurricanes. The two regions added 8.3M people from 2000-17 (16 percent increase). But the GoM region was the fastest growing coastline, adding 3M from 2000-17 (26.1 percent increase). The nation as a whole grew by only 15.7 percent in the same timeline. (Source: Census Bureau 07/2019)