Aon has revealed that total economic and insured losses will likely exceed $1 billion from the historic winter storm that severely impacted a large part of the United States and eastern Canada on January 23-26.
Providing some meteorological background for the event, Aon explained that on January 23, a deep, elongated trough extending over the western United States into northern Mexico began to move over the Great Plains.
Extremely cold air underneath this broad trough reportedly interacted with warm, moist air from the Gulf, producing a large swath of snow, sleet, ice, and rain over the central and southern U.S.
The slow progression of the system aided in heavier precipitation totals through January 26.
“Heavy ice and sleet devastated a large swath of the southeast U.S. while dozens of locations from New Mexico to Maine, as well as Ontario, received over a foot of snow,” Aon added.
At least 65 deaths have been attributed to the January 23–26 winter storm, with most fatalities reported across the southeastern and northeastern U.S., including Kentucky and Mississippi, which have each confirmed at least 10 deaths.
At the storm’s peak on January 24–25, power outages spiked from under 100,000 customers to 1.1 million, according to PowerOutage.us, and the event also led to at least 11,600 flight cancellations on January 25, according to FlightAware data.
Similar snow impacts extended into Ontario, Canada, with Toronto Pearson Airport seeing roughly 70% of all flights on January 24–25 cancelled or delayed.
In addition to outages and flight disruptions, the storm caused widespread property damage, toppled trees and powerlines, and triggered numerous car crashes across affected areas.
With all this in mind, and accounting for the damages observed so far, Aon has indicated that total economic and insured losses are expected to exceed one billion USD.
According to the firm, a large portion of losses will likely come from the southeast U.S. due to the impacts of the devastating ice storm on residential and utility infrastructure, as well as widespread tree damage.
“Prolonged cold air forecasted for much of the U.S. through early February may worsen material damages further, especially in hard-hit areas. While losses will continue to evolve in the coming weeks, the extensive impacts from the January 23-26 winter storm will likely rival that of previous historic U.S winter storms,” Aon concluded.
In related news, independent re/insurance broker BMS recently observed that the winter storm could generate several hundreds of millions of dollars in insured losses.
Andrew Siffert, Senior Vice President / Senior Meteorologist at BMS, noted that determining the overall insurance industry impact remains challenging, as winter storms are among the most complex perils for the industry and one of the most difficult for catastrophe risk models.
