Minimum pressure outperforms maximum wind speed in predicting hurricane storm surge, damage and fatalities

Storm surge from Atlantic tropical cyclones (TCs) is a large driver of fatalities and damage, accounting for 32% of all continental US (CONUS) TC fatalities from 1963 to 2024. Previous work has shown that landfalling minimum sea level pressure (MSLP) predicts normalized TC damage better than maximum sustained wind (V max ), in part reflecting the robust relationship between storm size and MSLP. Given that storm size is an important driver of storm surge, we find a significantly stronger relationship between peak storm surge and CONUS hurricane landfalling MSLP ( r = −0.78) than landfalling V max ( r = 0.68). Peak storm surge also significantly correlates with both normalized damage ( r rank = 0.72) and direct fatalities ( r rank = 0.51). ADCIRC-simulated peak storm surges show consistent relationships with MSLP, V max , normalized damage, and direct fatalities, reinforcing the observational results. These findings highlight landfalling MSLP as a more skillful predictor of hurricane hazards and impacts than V max .