Angry skies spitting out lightning bolts and icy marbles could soon replace the gray clouds and misty rains that ruled this week along the northern Front Range.
“As soon as it warms up, we are headed into our peak storm season,” warned Carole Walker, executive director for Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association.
Colorado ranks second only to Texas for the number of insurance claims filed due to hail strikes on homes, property and cars the past three years, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
Hail-related insurance claims in Colorado numbered 182,591 between 2013 and 2015, accounting for 9 percent of the U.S. total. That’s high for a state with only 1.7 percent of the country’s population.
Texas, which could fit three Colorados within its borders, had 394,572 hail-related claims, or 19 percent of the U.S. total, making it the top state.
Other states with a high number of hail claims include Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, South Dakota and Indiana. Taken together, the top 10 states accounted for about two-thirds of the 1.4 million U.S. hail-damage claims the past three years, according to the NICB.
Hailstorms and windstorms in recent years have replaced drought and wildfires as the biggest generator of claims in Colorado. Wave after wave of damaging events are driving up insurance premiums in the state for both home and auto policies, Walker said.
Chances are the Front Range won’t get much of a break this year, but it is hard to know for sure.
The El Niño weather pattern, triggered by above average temperatures in the equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean, tends to spawn fewer tornadoes and hailstorms in this part of the country, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research paper.
That was the case last year, when hail-damage claims in Colorado came in at only half the 2014 number.
But the current El Niño, the third strongest on record, is fading fast, with a cooler La Niña likely moving in quickly to take its place this fall. How smooth that transition will go meteorologically remains uncertain.
“We don’t have a good feel for what to expect,” said Patrick Marsh, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Major hailstorms have walloped several Texas cities, with San Antonio getting hit multiple times within a week last month. But on the whole, the severe weather season is looking about average in the Plains states, Marsh said.
Colorado is about to enter its peak severe storm season. Several wet and sloppy weeks have left behind a key ingredient necessary for extreme hailstorms — high ground-level moisture.
Hail is a leading cause of property damage in the U.S., but it rarely kills people, resulting in fewer dollars spent researching and predicting it.
But if people can pay closer attention to forecasts and shelter their cars, it could go a long way to reducing damages, Walker said.
Newer autos are built with expensive sensors and windshield cameras vulnerable to hail strikes, which in turn has significantly boosted repair costs, Walker said.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410, asvaldi@denverpost.com or @aldosvaldi
