Increasing major hail losses in the U.S.

Property losses due to hailstorms on April 13–14, 2006, resulted in Midwestern property losses that totaled $1.822 billion, an amount considerably more than the previous record high of $1.5 billion set by an April 2001 hail event. The huge April 2006 loss was largely due to multiple severe storms with frequent large hail hitting major metropolitan areas. A highly unstable air mass that developed on April 13 led to several supercell storms and they then produced large hailswaths across portions of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin during a 30-h period. This storm event and prior recent major hail losses occurred when several major hailstorms developed and then traveled for hundreds of kilometers. The nation’s top ten loss events during 1950–2006 reveal a notable temporal increase with most losses in the 1992–2006 period. Causes for the increases could be an increasing frequency of very unstable atmospheric conditions leading to bigger, longer lasting storms, and/or a greatly expanded urban society that has become increasingly vulnerable to hailstorms.