07/08/2026
The U.S. has a billion-dollar blind spot: . Scientists have never quite understood it. Meteorologist Judson Jones introduces scientists like NOAA's Dr. Sean Waugh who are chasing hailstorms across Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas to reveal more insights.
“Hail is a growing driver of losses,” said Adam Smith who ran NOAA's U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters program for 15 years until it was dismantled last year. Insurers now flag hail, not tornadoes, as the primary catalyst for the rising cost of living in the American heartland.
“From a loss perspective, we are on a pace where losses from severe storms double each decade,” said Dr. Ian Giammanco, PhD, a research scientist at the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) who participated in the In-situ Collaborative Experiment for the Collection of Hail In the Plains (ICECHIP), a field data collection project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Note: The U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters dataset continues on Climate Central: https://lnkd.in/e79xh66n
Full article at https://lnkd.in/gAM8eNSi
