Recent Hailstorm Is Colorado’s Most Expensive Catastrophe Ever

No storm that brings baseball-sized hail is going to be easy to deal with, but Denver’s recent thunderstorm proved to be a costly one. The May 8 hailstorm is the most costly insured catastrophe in the state, The Washington Post reports.

According to the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, insurance claims in the state related to the hailstorm—for damages to cars and homes, for instance—cost as much as $1.4 billion. More than 50,000 homeowners filed claims, as did 150 car owners. That makes it the most expensive catastrophe in recent history for Colorado insurers.

Its costs easily surpassed those of previous storms. Adjusting for inflation, one of the most expensive storms for insurers on record before this, which took place in July 1990, cost $1.1 billion, and the second-most expensive storm, back in July 2009, cost a mere $845.5 million in today’s dollars.

Damage caused by the torrent of ice, which included baseball-sized hail, was worse than usual because it fell during rush hour, which means there were plenty of cars on the road when the windshield-crushing precipitation came down. At another time of day, some of those cars might have been inside garages and out of harm's way.

Recent research has found that extreme weather is becoming a more frequent occurrence across the world, and according to scientists, climate change will continue to increase the likelihood of extreme events like massive heat waves and intense storms. That's bad news for insurance companies: More frequent and more powerful storms mean that insurers are going to have to pay out a whole lot more money for damages than they used to.