Hurricane Michael was the first Category 5 hurricane to hit the contiguous U.S. since Andrew in 1992. Making landfall in October of 2018 near Panama City, Florida, the storm rolled into Georgia in Seminole County, causing an immense amount of damage across a swathe of southwest Georgia. More than 400,000 residents were left without electricity.
The agricultural losses were huge. Estimates were somewhere around $2.5 billion – including more than $1 billion in forestry alone, with about 1 million acres of trees destroyed. Many pecan farms across the region were totally lost – a snapped pecan tree isn’t something that can be replanted and harvested the next year. Some 2 million chickens died in the storm and nearly a half billion dollars of vegetables were lost. A predicted bumper cotton crop estimated to be between $300-800 million was decimated.
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