NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. won a $224 million bet with Florida after the state side-stepped major damage from hurricanes this year.

Florida's option agreement that would have compelled Buffett to buy $4 billion of bonds to finance storm recovery will expire today, Dennis MacKee, a spokesman for the State Board of Administration, said in an interview. The state earlier paid Buffett $224 million in return for his commitment to buy the debt if needed. The calm season meant Florida had no need to raise the money.

Florida turned to Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire to erase doubts about the state's ability to raise money after a hurricane. The state sells coverage to homeowners and private companies at below-market rates, and plans to fund cash shortfalls in the bond market. Finding investors could be a "very challenging task", Fitch Ratings said in March.

"It would've been difficult to issue bonds in this environment, so I do think it ended up working out well for everyone involved," MacKee said. "We were fortunate to have a mild hurricane season."

Under the terms of the deal disclosed in July, Berkshire agreed to buy the debt if the state's fund incurred $25 billion in losses by year-end. Berkshire would have collected 6.5 percent annual interest over the 30-year life of the bond. The state predicted a single storm could cause losses of that magnitude once every 32 years. The most-expensive disaster in US history, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, cost the insurance industry about $41.1 billion. Florida was hit by four hurricanes in 2004 for the first time since record-keeping began in 1851, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This year's hurricane season, which ended on November 30, was among the five worst since 1944, according to the NOAA, with the damage in the US concentrated in Texas and Louisiana. The season was the first to have a major hurricane form in each of five straight months. Ten of the past 14 years have had above-average storm activity in the Atlantic, the NOAA said on November 26.

Berkshire, which gets about half its profit from insurance, is willing to risk a payment of as much as $6 billion on a single storm if the risk was adequately compensated, Buffett has said. The firm had more than $30 billion in cash as of September 30.

Jackie Wilson, a spokeswoman for Berkshire, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

MacKee said the state would evaluate reinsurance contracts before deciding whether to pursue a similar deal for the 2009 hurricane season, which begins on June 1.