Hurricane Idalia caused around $20 billion in damages

Hurricane Idalia caused somewhere between $12 billion and $20 billion in damages. However, it didn't cause as much damage as other hurricanes. CNN Business reported the preliminary cost estimates compiled by Moody's Analytics.

"For context, Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in Western Florida last year as a Category 4 storm, caused an estimated $112.9 billion of total damage in the United States, according to the National Hurricane Center. That made it the third-costliest US hurricane on record," CNN explained.

Unlike other natural disasters, the cost doesn't just come from a handful of counties that were affected, but from a large area of several states that experienced significant, but not catastrophic, damage.

On Thursday, Voz Media reported that Idalia crossed through a mostly rural area in Florida. There are only 18,000 people in all of Madison County, which borders Georgia. There was significant damage to the local network and electrical infrastructure.

At the height of the storm, about 250,000 Florida customers were without power. In some counties, outages accounted for 60% of the entire power grid. The affected counties are Wakulla, Taylor, Dixie, Lafayette, Suwannee, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Columbia, Gilchrist and Levy.