The hurricanes that swept through Texas and Florida destroyed and damaged as many as 900,000 vehicles, and the replacement activity that the catastrophic events spurred boosted value by almost 2%, according Black Book.

Through the three-month period between August and October, the retained value of used vehicles sold at auction increased 1.8%. This was due to the fact that since somewhere between 500,000 and 900,000 vehicles were destroyed, there was a large volume of vehicles that needed to be replaced.

This surge in demand caused wholesale values for many vehicle segments to depreciate at much slower rates, according to Black Book.

Anily Goyal, senior vice president of automotive valuation and analytics, compared the positive effect on used vehicle values to the Cash for Clunkers program in 2009, when approximately 690,000 older-model vehicles were replaced and overall used vehicle retention increased 3.4%.