U.S. insured wind, storm surge loss from Hurricane Nate around $500 million: KCC

(Reuters) - Insured losses in the United States from Hurricane Nate will be close to $500 million, catastrophe modeling company Karen Clark & Company (KCC) said on Monday. The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Monday that the former hurricane has become a post-tropical cyclone that continues to pack heavy rain and gusty winds. Hurricane Nate caused flooding in Mississippi, but spared the state from catastrophic damages. On Monday, it was expected to continue tracking northeastward, moving through the Ohio Valley and into the lower great lakes. KCC said the estimates included insured wind and storm surge losses to residential, commercial, and industrial properties and autos. Insurers and reinsurers are already counting the costs of Harvey, which lashed Texas causing flooding that put it on the scale of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, which ravaged several islands in the northern Caribbean, before moving into Florida's Gulf Coast. More recently Maria, the most powerful hurricane to hit the U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico in nearly 90 years, knocked out the territory's entire power grid, unleashing severe flooding and causing widespread heavy damage. (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; editing by Carolyn Cohn)