The severe hailstorm which recently devastated parts of inner-city Sydney has been a sober reminder to the Australian community that it remains relatively vulnerable to the impact of severe hail. For those in the insurance industry this type of loss should come as no surprise since history has shown storms of similar hail producing capacity are relatively common events. The difference this time is that it happened where it could cause maximum damage. While we cannot prevent the incidence of such storms we can plan appropriately for the likely damage they might cause and, for the future, we should aim to put in place mitigation plans to try to reduce the level of loss. Earlier Bureau of Meteorology warnings may have reduced motor vehicle damage but would have had little effect on housing losses.
Severe thunderstorms are very difficult to accurately forecast.
Unlike tropical cyclones, which generally develop over several days, severe thunderstorms can change very significantly within just a few tens of minutes. It has already been used very successfully in the Brisbane region to quantify the level of damage from such events, allowing estimates of average annual losses and also catastrophic losses to return periods in excess of 1,000 years. Our services include statistical analysis of tropical cyclone data, quantitative estimation of insurance losses, cyclone wind, wave and storm surge modelling, flood risk assessment and severe thunderstorm downbursts, hail and tornadoes.