Catastrophe data loss aggregation and estimation firm, PERILS AG, has provided an initial insured property market loss estimate of €291 million (roughly US$342mn) for extratropical Cyclone Xavier.
Xavier mostly affected Germany on October 5th, 2017, developing very early in the European winter storm season, claiming seven lives in the country as it brought damaging gusts that spanned roughly 250km wide and that ran ENE-WSW, from Hamburg to Berlin.
PERILS explains that the timing of the storm meant that trees were more vulnerable to being blow over owing to many still being heavy with leaves, something that wouldn’t have happened were Xavier to have struck later in the European winter storm season.
Extratropical Cyclone Xavier affected numerous states across Germany, including Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, and also Berlin.
The intense winds experienced over northern and eastern Germany lasted for approximately 14 hours, which PERILS says reflects the “extraordinary rapid passage of Xavier.”
Head of Data Management at PERILS, Georg Andrea, commented; “Given the storm’s early occurrence in the European winter storm season, a significant part of the damage was caused by falling trees which still had leaves on them. Given the unusual characteristics of the Xavier event, the storm will add valuable loss data to the PERILS Database, allowing users to derive season-dependent vulnerability information for Germany.”
