tornadoes

The insurance industry loss toll from convective storms, so severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and hail, and the flooding they have caused in recent weeks has jumped again to reach $4 billion, according to Aon Benfield’s Impact Forecasting unit.

Insurance industry losses from severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and flooding in the U.S. during May is expected to surpass $1 billion, according to Aon Benfield’s catastrophe modelling unit, Impact Forecasting.

Insurance industry losses from U.S. severe thunderstorms, so including hail and tornado events, are estimated to have reached $3.1 billion by mid-May and are expected to spike sharply higher, given the widespread impacts of extreme weather in recent days.

Insured losses from outbreaks of severe thunderstorms in the U.S. in April are expected to reach $2 billion, according to an estimate from reinsurance broker Aon Benfield’s risk modelling unit Impact Forecasting.

This year has seen a dearth of reported tornado events across the United States. Currently the run-rate for tornado reports is significantly below average and in fact less than half the 25th percentile and not far off the minimum ever seen by this time in March.

Global total economic and insured losses from severe convective storms is on the rise as the event’s sub-perils, which includes hail storms, flooding, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, caused increasing losses in 2014, according to reinsurer Swiss Re.

2014 is on course to be one of the lowest years for U.S. tornado activity on record. The number of tornadoes recorded so far throughout the states is below the absolute minimum ever recorded and roughly half the amount recorded in 2011.

A new piece of insurance industry research, announced today by Verisk Climate a division of Verisk Analytics, seeks to explain the changing frequency of severe thunderstorm weather events in the U.S.

A recent study conducted by reinsurance giant Swiss Re uses logic-based methodology to predict the potential financial impacts of tornadoes on large US cities to the insurance and reinsurance industry.

Last week we added a new page to Artemis, under the Catastrophes tab above, providing sources of data to help you track the development of the U.S. tornado and severe thunderstorm season, one of the perils that catastrophe bonds and ILS have exposure to.