Hail weighs heavily on multi-billion April US weather losses

An active month of severe weather in April resulted in multiple thunderstorm outbreaks in the United States, according to the monthly Global Catastrophe Recap from global professional services firm  Aon.

The outbreaks, which were driven by large hail, tornadoes and damaging straight-line winds, left considerable damage to residential and commercial property, automobiles, and agriculture in parts of the Plains, Midwest, Southeast and Northeast.

The most significant outbreak occurred from April 27-30, where a particularly damaging sequence of hailstorms affected three heavily populated areas on April 28. Hail larger than the size of baseballs impacted the San Antonio (TX), Fort Worth (TX), and Norman (OK) metro regions and caused extensive damage. Total economic losses from these three areas alone were expected to well exceed $1 billion.

For the entire month of April, the US insurance industry was expected to face a multi-billion-dollar bill for thunderstorm-related claims payouts.

Elsewhere, western and central regions of Europe experienced a significant cold spell within the first week of April as numerous locations recorded record lows for the month, with temperatures well below freezing. Late spring frost caused significant damage to viticulture, fruit trees and other vegetation. Preliminary estimates suggest an economic impact of more than €5billion, most notably in France and Italy.

Steve Bowen, managing director and head of Catastrophe Insight on the Impact Forecasting team at Aon, said: “Public perception often assumes that tornadoes drive the bulk of annual severe convective storm (SCS) damage costs. The reality is that large hail typically accounts for a majority of thunderstorm-related losses in North America during any given year, and April 2021 was a case in point – the month featured the lowest number of U.S. tornadoes for April since 1992, yet a multi-billion-dollar damage bill is anticipated following extensive hail impacting highly populated areas of Texas and Oklahoma. As more population moves into high-risk areas for the SCS peril, it is anticipated that costs associated with hail will only grow in the future.”

Did you get value from this story?  Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.