Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee: $8.3 billion

Hurricane Irene, which struck coastal North Carolina and moved through the Mid-Atlantic and New England from August 20 to 29, caused an estimated $7.3 billion in damages, and killed 45 people.

Fast on its heels, Tropical Storm Lee, which made landfall on the Gulf Coast on September 2, and swept all the way through the Northeast, where it hit already-drenched Pennsylvania and New York particularly hard. Twenty-one deaths were blamed on the storm, as well as more than $1 billion in damages.