"Never let a good crisis go to waste," has reportedly been attributed to Winston Churchill, grandson of England's 7^th Duke of Marlborough, regarding post Second World War conditions leading to the formation of the United Nations.

Whether Churchill actually said this or not, the observation can also be applied to the insurance industry following Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma in 2017. The insurance community can begin to put these weather crises to good use by adjusting its expectations regarding catastrophe forecasting based on the following meteorological scorecard:

• Hurricane Irma became the strongest Atlantic storm on record — excluding the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

• In terms of hurricane intensity, September 2017 is now recognized as the single most powerful month ever recorded in the Atlantic.

• With Hurricane Harvey dropping 60.58 inches of rain near Nederland, Texas, a new record for the greatest amount of rainfall in the 48 contiguous states from a single storm was established, according to WeatherBug.

• When you group Hurricanes Katia and Lee with Harvey, Maria and Irma, their "Accumulated Cyclone Energy" was recorded as the greatest amount of energy for any month on record, according to Colorado State University meteorologist Phil Klotzbach.

• The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was the first season since records were first kept more than 150 years ago during which two Category 4 hurricanes – Harvey and Irma – made landfall on the continental U.S. in the same year, said Klotzbach.

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