Environment Canada’s Top 10 weather stories in 2009 include storms causing $637 million in insured damages

Three weather storms that caused insurers a total of $637 million cracked Environment Canada’s list of Top Ten Weather Stories for 2009.
Tornadoes in Ontario placed third on Environment Canada’s list, which was based on an assessment of the severity of the event, its impact on Canadians, the extent of the area covered and the economic repercussions.
“Ontario witnessed 29 tornadoes in 2009, which tied the record for the most tornadoes in one year set in 2006,” Environment Canada noted in its report. “On average, the province sees 11 tornadoes each year.”
At least eighteen of those tornadoes hit southwestern Ontario on August 20, causing insurance payments totaling more than $76 million, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC).
Deadly windstorms and hailstorms that hit Alberta in August 2009 appeared as Number 7 on Environment Canada’s list. Those storms resulted in more than $365-million worth of insurance claims payouts, according to the IBC.
Torrential rains in the Ottawa and Hamilton regions between July 24 and July 26 resulted in Cdn$196 million in insurance payouts. These events appeared as Number 8 on Environment Canada’s list.
In Hamilton, “water gushed into 7,000 basements and power was shut off to thousands of customers,” Environment Canada reports. “While the Hamilton Airport observed only 28 mm of rain, radar estimates confirmed rainfall amounts in an unofficial gauge totaling 109 mm in two hours — worse than a 100-year storm and one of the most intense short-duration rainfalls on record in Canada.”
Environment Canada’s Number 2 weather story, the wildfires in Kelowna, B.C., barely caused a dent in the insurance industry’s claims costs.
Only four homes were destroyed in the 2009 fires, says Lindsay Olson, IBC’s vice president of British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. “If there were going to be any claims, it would be [a result of] the mass evacuation coverage for the homeowners,” she says. “But the limits under most policies are as such that even that total would not be very large either.”
Environment Canada’s top story was “the summer that wasn’t.”
“Nationally, there was nothing exceptional about the temperature or precipitation in 2009,” Environment Canada said. “Crunch all of the statistics and it averaged a half-degree warmer and a meager 2% drier than normal.
“But dig a little deeper — separate those statistics out — and there’s nothing ‘normal’ about this year’s weather at all. The seasons were out of whack across the country, with new records or near records in every region.”