In America’s storm narrative, one familiar villain is quietly being upstaged. The New York Times‘ Judson Jones reports that while tornadoes have long dominated the headlines, it’s hail that’s increasingly emptying wallets. One staggering stat illustrates the point: A single hour of hail over a midsize city can rack up $1 billion in damage. Scientists now know golf-ball-size hail can be flung out of a tornado at more than 200 mph, fast enough to shred crops, wreck roofs, and help drive up insurance premiums across the Plains. One Oklahoma farmer interviewed in the piece recounts a $300,000 loss after one storm, and that’s after insurance payouts.
“Hail is a growing driver of losses,” says former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Adam Smith, who led a federal disaster-tracking program until it was eliminated last year. Hail has, in fact, supplanted tornadoes as the “primary catalyst” for the rising cost of living in the US heartland, writes Jones. The writer follows NOAA scientist Sean Waugh and a research team as they chase storms with special gear to capture hail in flight—an attempt to fill in a massive data gap. But with federal science funding cut and projects scaled back, more of the research is now being bankrolled by insurance and reinsurance companies. Read the full story for more on what is described as America’s “billion-dollar blind spot.”
