If one could use only a singleword to sum up 2011, “catastrophes” best captures what this yearwas all about.

January started on a soggy note with large pockets of Australiaunder water, as floods caused insured losses of up to $3 billion.Just the next month, the Southern Hemisphere suffered again, as NewZealand saw a 6.3 earthquake that toppled buildings in Christchurchand led to claims north of $10 billion (part of a nightmarish,12-month stretch where Kiwis experienced multiple quakes, includingone in September of 2010 and another one in June of this year).

Then, for a few unforgettableweeks in the late winter and spring—from the massive Japaneseearthquake and devastating tsunami that followed through the spateof tornadoes that ravaged the U.S. in April and May—it seemed likea major disaster struck every other day.

Indeed, the first half of the year wound up being one for therecord books. Global reinsurer Munich Re counted 355 significantloss events in quarters one and two—which caused an all-time highof $265 billion in economic losses. In the U.S. alone, 100 eventsled to more than $18 billion in insured losses.

The second half, fortunately, did not see a Katrina-like event,but Mother Nature hardly let us off the hook. While Florida onceagain escaped the hurricane season unscathed, Irene underscored thedegree of damage that can occur deep inland as it pounded, of allplaces, Vermont, and ultimately could lead to $4.3 billion ofinsured property losses.

And the first half’s floods,quakes and tornadoes were joined by summer wildfires in Texas—andthen a freak October snowstorm in the Northeast, severe enough thatMoody’s labeled it a “major capital event” for insurers.

The conversation around the importance of supply-chain insurancethat the Japanese quake helped spark only intensified when fallfloodwaters inundated much of Thailand—including nearly 10,000factories that play a critical role in supplying parts to theautomotive and computer industries.

The collective toll onunderwriters was terrible. First-half net income for U.S.property-and-casualty insurers, for example, plummeted 67 percentcompared to the same period in 2010. The second quarter wasparticularly brutal for domestic carriers with a heavyconcentration in personal lines, as the twisters in Alabama,Arkansas, Oklahoma and, most memorably, Joplin, Mo., flattenedhomes and crushed cars.

Allstate experienced more than $2.3 billion in catastrophelosses from 30 events in that April-June timeframe. Liberty Mutualalso topped the billion-dollar mark in 2Q, with $1.3 billion incatastrophe losses. By September 23, home-and-auto giant State Farmhad processed just under one million claims—970,000—for the yearand had paid policyholders $5 billion.

Not surprisingly, the cumulative hit of all these catastrophesdid cause an overall hardening for property exposures—withAustralia, New Zealand and Japan seeing prices increase bydouble-digit percentages.

And while none of the events in the singular were enough to endthe soft market (see caption, opposite page), the aggregate effectof the losses does have the market poised for a general hardeningas we enter 2012.