The relentless Hurricane Bill has claimed two lives though it never even made landfall.

A 7-year-old girl died after a large wave, produced by Hurricane Bill, knocked her and two others into the Atlantic Ocean off Maine’s Acadia National Park. The Coast Guard was able to rescue all three, but the young girl later died in the hospital.

In Florida, a 54-year-old man drowned in the harsh waters, caused by the hurricane, off New Smyrna Beach.

The storm is also being blamed for the hospitalization of nine others in the U.S. and power failure to more than 23,000 homes and businesses in Nova Scotia.

Bill was downgraded from a to Tropical Storm status early this morning, with winds near 70 mph. The National Hurricane Center has stated that Bill has lost its “tropical characteristics” and the center does not predict any further damage to be created by the storm. According to the Insurance Information Institute:

Over the 20-year period 1988 to 2007, hurricanes and tropical storms made up 45.6 percent of total catastrophe losses.

Though the eastern coast of Canada is not as popular a destination as the coastline of Florida for hurricane landfalls, the area has surely seen its share of hurricane activity, including the following, more recent storms:

• September 15, 1996 — Hurricane Hortense was the first hurricane to directly strike Nova Scotia since Hurricane Blanche in 1975. Hortense made landfall as a category 1 storm and caused $3 million in damage.
• September 29, 2003 — Hurricane Juan, which is sometimes considered Atlantic Canada’s most widely destructive hurricane in more than a century, ripped through the coast of Nova Scotia. The storm killed 8 and caused more than $200 million in damage.
• September 28, 2008 — Hurricane Kyle made landfall in Nova Scotia as a category 1 hurricane, causing power outages to 40,000 and $9 million in damage. 

As always, we will keep an eye on all storm activity in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Check back each Friday for our Storm Summary series.