MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015
We’re reading about the economic and insurance impact of
severe thunderstorms in the United States in April 2015, as reported by Aon Benfield’s latest Global Catastrophe Recap report.
Five separate thunderstorm events in central and eastern
parts of the U.S. caused expected insured losses of $2 billion, including more
than $750 million from one event alone.
What was the $750 million event?
A widespread multi-day severe weather outbreak that hit
central and eastern parts of the U.S. from April 7-10, leaving at least 3 dead
and dozens injured.
Major damage was noted across the Plains, Midwest and the
Mississippi Valley following 25 confirmed tornado touchdowns, grapefruit-sized
hail, damaging straight-line winds, and flooding rains, according to Aon.
The April 9 EF4 tornado that devastated the communities of
Fairdale and Rochelle, Illinois, is part of this event.
Total economic losses were estimated at $1 billion, while
insurers put losses beyond $750 million.
Interestingly, Aon notes that much of the insured losses in
this severe weather event were driven by claims resulting from hail.
The Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) has some useful
facts and statistics on hail here.
It cites ISO figures that indicate events involving wind,
hail or flood accounted for $16.1 billion in insured catastrophe losses in 2013
dollars from 1994 to 2013 (not including payouts from the National Flood Insurance
Program).
The I.I.I. also notes that there were 5,536 major hail
storms in 2014, per statistics culled from NOAA’s Severe Storm database.
Nebraska had the largest number of severe hail events in 2014, followed by
Texas, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri.
Over the 14 years from 2000 to 2013, U.S. insurers paid
almost 9 million claims for hail losses, totaling more than $54 billion,
according to a recent report by Verisk Insurance Solutions. That’s a hail of an
impact.