Hail can be destructive, yet the cost of the damage often isn’t publicly tracked. NOAA/NSSL
On Jan. 5, 2025, at about 2:35 in the afternoon, the first severe hailstorm of the season dropped quarter-size hail in Chatham, Mississippi. According to the federal storm events database, there were no injuries, but it caused $10,000 in property damage.
How do we know the storm caused $10,000 in damage? We don’t.
That estimate is probably a best guess from someone whose primary job is weather forecasting. Yet these guesses, and thousands like them, form the foundation for publicly available tallies of the costs of severe weather.
If the damage estimates from hailstorms are consistently lower in one county than the next, potential property buyers might think it’s because there’s less risk of hailstorms. Instead, it might just be because different people are making the estimates.
Hail damage in Dallas in June 2012.
Rondo Estrello/Flickr, CC…
Source link : https://usa365.info/storm-damage-costs-are-often-a-mystery-thats-a-problem-for-understanding-extreme-weather-risk/
Author : USA365
Publish date : 2025-06-05 18:27:00
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