Hurricane Arthur insured losses to stay below $250M: RMS

This Friday, July 4, 2014 aerial photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard shows flooding caused by Hurricane Arthur on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. / AP Photo

Catastrophe modeling firm Risk Management Solutions Inc. said on Friday that it estimates that insured losses from Hurricane Arthur will not exceed $250 million.

RMS said the losses from Arthur, which made landfall on the southern end of North Carolina's Outer Banks on July 3, were primarily to residential structures.

The main driver of loss from the storm in North Carolina was from wind and coastal flooding, RMS said. In Nova Scotia, where Arthur made a second landfall as a post-tropical storm on July 4, losses mostly came from inland flooding, the company said.

Brian Owens, senior director, business solutions at RMS noted that Arthur was the first hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. since Hurricane Sandy in 2012. “What is unusual about Arthur, particularly for this time of year, is that it rapidly deepened to become a category 2 hurricane,” Mr. Owen said. “It's also rare for hurricanes to form in early July, which climatologically is the quietest time of the hurricane season.”