Last year around this time, the tropics provided some unintentional basis for what would become hysteria. Hurricane Harvey by soaking a major metropolitan area with a biblical amount of rainfall delighted Keynesians everywhere. So much destruction, so much economic growth potential on the rebuild. Then Irma flirted with the Gulf Coast spine of Florida for good measure.

For several months, if you didn’t watch the Weather Channel you might have thought the economy was accelerating. Combined with other factors, the narrative of globally synchronized growth chief among them, inflation hysteria reached full volume.

Economists are hoping for something similar out of Florence. As the middle of 2017, the middle of 2018 isn’t quite shaping up as expected. Sure, Q2 GDP was revised up to 4.1% but even the most hardcore of inflationists know that the trick is not to occasionally touch 4% growth but do so quarter after quarter after quarter. Those two near 5% in the middle of 2014 proved, in the end, nothing other than a torturous tease.

One of the more consistent economic indications has been Markit’s Composite PMI. Part services, part manufacturing, the index is supposed to capture near real-time conditions for a broad enough cross-section. Like most PMI’s, it’s not quite so simple. What matters most, and what this version has been best at, is when it starts moving.

That’s why some renewed appreciation for storm-broken windows. If IHS Markit’s PMI is right, the US economy is slowing. The flash estimate for September, released today, was 53.4 down from 54.7 (final) in August. That’s a 17-month low.

In an attempted response, to begin the fourth paragraph of the press release Florence pops up. “Anecdotal evidence that some of the slowdown in overall output growth reflected company shutdowns on the east coast ahead of hurricane Florence”. Maybe, but early indications are that Florence was no Harvey, nor Irma for that matter, and the composite PMI barely noticed the downside when the latter struck in August 2017.