By Grace Muller, AccuWeather.com Staff Writer

Aug 8, 2011; 7:52 AM ET

Drought, floods, thunderstorms, tornadoes and the heat wave. Weather has hit the United States brutally this year. What now?

The worst of hurricane season is ahead. With tumbling stock markets, hurricane season can bring some serious pain.

“The weather has a significant impact on every sector of the economy in every state of the U.S.,” according to Jeff Lazo, a scientist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Meteorologists at AccuWeather.com predict four direct hits on the United States by tropical systems this year. Clean-up costs from those storms will drain already fragile state budgets in a tumbling stock market.

With four predicted tropical system hits this year, severe weather damage totals will grow.

A tropical system hitting the United States does not necessarily mean that the storm will be a hurricane. A tropical system could be anything from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. A hurricane is a tropical cyclone with winds more than 73 mph.

How Much Does a Hurricane Cost?

The median cost of an Atlantic hurricane that hits land in the United States is $1.8 billion (2011 adjusted).

The median cost is the most accurate measure of the middle of the data because Hurricane Katrina’s immense damage, at $145 billion (2011 adjusted), inflates the average cost of a hurricane to close to $9 billion.

“The economy can be hurt and helped by the weather,” said AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Ken Reeves.

“Leaving aside the personal devastation that takes place during an extreme weather event,” Reeves added, “extreme weather can lead to high damage costs, but contractors and suppliers benefit by repairing the damage and supplying the material to repair the damage.”

Take a look at the numbers: estimated damage in billions from hurricanes that directly hit the United States from 1980 to 2010. You can read the data and comment on Scribd.

Cost estimates from a hurricane don’t include damage the system causes once it moves inland. For example, Hurricane Ike hit land in Texas but Ike’s high winds knocked down power lines across North America.

The hurricane costs don’t include costs from tropical storms. Slower-moving storms hover over an area, dumping more rain than a hurricane with high winds that quickly passes through.

The National Weather service says that more than half of U.S. tropical cyclone deaths from 1970 to 1999 were caused by inland flooding.