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Hurricane Harvey rapidly intensified into a Category 4 storm in 2017 with some areas of Texas receiving as much over five days. 

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The rainfall amounts and area impacted by Hurricane Harvey. CBS News

Hurricane Florence made landfall as a Category 1 and caused upwards of 35 inches of rainfall in several locations when it moved slowly across North and South Carolina in two days in 2018. 

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The rainfall amounts and area impacted by Hurricane Florence. CBS News

Hurricane Ida rapidly intensified multiple times before making landfall in 2021 as a Category 4 on the Louisiana coast, but the storm produced historic flooding as far away as New York and New Jersey as it traveled up the East Coast, leading to the drowning deaths of . 

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The rainfall amounts and area impacted by Hurricane Ida. CBS News

As climate change transforms today's hurricanes into stronger and wetter storms, the old Saffir-Simpson scale is less accurate in predicting damage and danger because it only addresses a storm's wind speed and omits a hurricane's flood potential. Researchers have metric to be included with storm reports, but the National Hurricane Center has not formally incorporated a rainfall metric into its projections. Such a warning could become necessary. 

A CBS News analysis of data from , a research group specializing in climate, shows that by 2053, hurricanes could cause flooding damage to more than 19 million properties across the country. The flooding could reach areas not seen in modern history.  

However, federal flood insurance would only cover properties in specific flood zones, leaving 75.3% of property owners left to foot the bill. With 39 tropical storms, including hurricanes, causing more than $1.2 trillion in damage across the U.S. in the last 20 years, these storms continue to be the costliest and most damaging type of weather event. 

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