Surrogate Data to Estimate Crop-Hail Loss

Abstract

Crop-hail insurance loss data for 1948?94 are useful as measures of the historical variability of damaging hail in those 26 states where most crop damages occur. However, longer records are needed for various scientific and business applications, as well as information on potential losses in United States? areas without crop insurance. The long-term (1901 to present) data on hail-day incidences, as derived from National Weather Service historical station records, were investigated to determine if some form of a hail-day expression related well to the insurance losses. The areal extent of insured areas of Illinois, Texas, and Nebraska experiencing growing season frequencies of hail days matching or exceeding the once in 10-yr frequencies was found to have the best relationship with insured loss values. The computed correlation coefficients were +0.97 for Illinois, +0.73 for Texas, and +0.91 for Nebraska. These values appear to be a useful surrogate for 1) estimating pre-1948 loss values, 2) estimating loss values in areas with no insurance, and 3) further research involving other states with different crop and hail conditions.