Data and Approaches for Determining Hail Risk in the Contiguous United States

Abstract

Abstract Rapidly increasing hail damages to property have brought average annual losses to $1.2 billion (in 1997-adjusted dollars) during the 1990s; this rise in loss exposure has created great concern in the insurance industry and has led to efforts to define the hail risk across the nation. Since the property industry has not kept hail loss records, it must rely on available climatological data supplemented by data from field studies to assess hail risk. Hail risk at a point or over an area is a function of the target at risk (property or crop) and the hail frequency and intensity. Newly available climatological data based on historical hail records collected by the National Weather Service since 1900 have enhanced the ability to assess point risk. Some spatial risk assessments have combined point averages of hail-day frequencies with hailstone sizes to define risk, and others also employed hailstone volume (mass of ice) and wind associated with hail, based on data from field projects. Those seeking to ...