Over the weekend, a preliminary insured-loss estimate from Hurricane Irene by modeler AIR Worldwide of between $2 billion and $8 billion “was disseminated without consent of AIR,” it says in an emailed statement.

AIR says the estimate was provided for clients before Irene made its second landfall at Coney Island, N.Y. and “does not represent the full track of Irene.

The Boston-based modeler plans to release its official estimate later today.

Between $500 million and $1.1 billion in insured losses are expected in the Caribbean from Irene, AIR says in its only public estimate of the hurricane thus far.

The estimate includes wind and flood damage to insured onshore residential, commercial and industrial properties, contents, automobiles and business-interruption losses in the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, and other Caribbean territories, AIR says.

Meanwhile, modeler Risk Management Solutions (RMS) has sent a recognizance team to North Carolina and Virginia to “observe damage in order to set our modeling parameters and build a wind field,” says Matthew Nielsen, senior product manager of RMS's U.S. hurricane model.

RMS has not released an insured-loss estimate and it may be a couple of days before it does, but Nielsen predicts Irene will produce a “high volume of claims with low average dollar amounts.”

“It was a fairly large storm and there was a high volume of exposure in its path, but the damage so far is limited to falling trees, roofs and siding, and refrigerated food,” he says. Another factor in insured losses will be the extensive power outages, Nielsen adds.