For only the 3rd fourth dimension since 1970, insured losses from extreme weather condition events worldwide exceeded $100 billion, according to a report yesterday by Swiss Re, the global reinsurance company.

Insured losses this twelvemonth from storms, floods and other dangerous events are projected to attain $101 billion, with the damage occurring overwhelmingly in the U.Southward., Swiss Re said.

The report is preliminary and does not include last weekend's tornadoes in Kentucky and surrounding states, which caused an estimated $3 billion in harm.

The world'southward costliest weather-related disaster this year was Hurricane Ida, a Category four storm that cut a path of destruction from Louisiana to New York in late August and early September and caused an estimated $30 billion to $32 billion in insured amercement, co-ordinate to Swiss Re.

The 2nd-costliest event was the winter storm that knocked out power for millions of people in Texas in Feb and acquired $15 billion in insured losses, Swiss Re said.

Outside the U.S., the costliest weather event was the flooding in July that swamped Frg and Belgium and caused $13 billion in insured damages. Conditions events include storms and tornadoes, flooding, drought, oestrus waves, wildfire, and common cold weather, only not earthquakes and tsunamis.

"It seems to accept become the norm that at least i secondary peril event such as a astringent flooding, wintertime tempest or wildfire each twelvemonth results in losses of more than than $10 billion," Martin Bertogg, head of catastrophic perils at Swiss Re, said in a statement.

The insured losses this year from weather events are the 3rd costliest since Swiss Re began tracking them in 1970. The largest weather-related losses—$152 billion—occurred in 2017 when hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In 2005, there were $141 billion in insured losses, caused largely by Hurricane Katrina.

Swiss Re'due south analysis includes but losses that are covered by insurance, which the company acknowledges excludes tens of billions of dollars of uninsured damage, especially in Europe, where at that place is a "very big flood protection gap."

By contrast, NOAA's preliminary estimate for the total impairment caused by Ida is $64.v billion, with the losses occurring mostly in Louisiana, New York and New Bailiwick of jersey.

Disaster modeling business firm Karen Clark & Co. estimated yesterday that the recent tornadoes acquired around $iii billion in total damage. The damage was full-bodied in Kentucky, where hundreds of homes and businesses were destroyed, and besides occurred in Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.

The $iii billion estimate is far less than the $11 billion in damage that NOAA says occurred when tornadoes devastated 15 states from Texas to Pennsylvania in May 2011 and killed 158 people in Joplin, Mo.

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2021. E&E News provides essential news for energy and surround professionals.