Aon revealed that the historic winter storm that occurred from January 23 to 26 severely affected much of the United States and eastern Canada, causing total economic and insured losses that may exceed $1 billion.
Aon provided some meteorological background to the event, explaining that on January 23, a deep, elongated trough of low pressure that stretched from the western United States to northern Mexico began moving over the Great Plains.
Extremely cold air beneath this wide trough reportedly interacted with warm, moist air from the Gulf to produce large swaths of snow, sleet, ice and rain across the central and southern United States.
The slow progress of the system resulted in increased rainfall totals on January 26.
“A large swath of the southeastern United States was hit by heavy ice and sleet, with more than a foot of snow accumulating in dozens of locations from New Mexico to Maine and Ontario,” Aon added.
The winter storm from January 23 to 26 has killed at least 65 people, with most of the deaths occurring in the southeast and northeast of the United States, including Kentucky and Mississippi, both of which have confirmed at least 10 deaths.
During the peak of the storm on January 24-25, the number of customers without power surged from less than 100,000 to 1.1 million, according to PowerOutage.us; the incident also led to the cancellation of at least 11,600 flights on January 25, according to FlightAware.
Similar snowfall effects also extended to Ontario, Canada, with about 70% of flights at Toronto Pearson Airport canceled or delayed between January 24 and 25.
In addition to power outages and flight disruptions, the storm caused widespread property damage, downed trees and power lines, and caused multiple crashes in the affected areas.
Taking all of this into consideration, and taking into account the losses observed to date, Aon said total economic and insured losses are expected to exceed $1 billion.
The company said a significant portion of the damage is likely to come from the southeastern United States due to the impact of the devastating ice storm on residential and utility infrastructure and widespread tree damage.
“Persistent cold air is expected to develop over much of the United States through early February, which may further exacerbate physical damage, especially in hard-hit areas. While damage will continue to increase in the coming weeks, the widespread impact of the January 23-26 winter storm is likely to rival the impact of previous historic winter storms in the United States,” Aon concluded.
In related news, independent reinsurance broker BMS recently observed that winter storms could cause hundreds of millions of dollars in insured losses.
Andrew Siffert, senior vice president/senior meteorologist at BMS, noted that determining the overall impact to the insurance industry remains challenging because winter storms are one of the industry’s most complex hazards and one of the most difficult to model catastrophe risk.
