Texas insurers have written checks for $500 million to pay claims on hail damage from a May 28 storm in Amarillo.
"The Amarillo hailstorm just became the 10th costliest storm on record in the state," says Mark Hanna, a spokesman for the Insurance Council of Texas. "The losses from this hailstorm are comparable to Hurricane Dolly that struck South Padre Island back in 2008." The storm is the costliest in Amarillo's history.
ICT released the figure from ISO's Property Claim Services. Tens of thousands of claims were filed.
Last May a storm moved over the city and caused damage to about 75 percent of residential property in the city, pelting it with baseball-size hail and high winds. Amarillo is the fourteenth most populated in Texas with about 194,000 people.
The storm system, which included tornadoes, caused $1.3 billion in insured losses to seven states. After Texas, it moved onto Oklahoma, where it caused an additional $450 million in damage, ICT says.
By far, Texas leads all other states in significant hail events (see chart).
There were 7,031 major hail storms in 2012, according to statistics culled from NOAA's Severe Storms database. Most storms happened in March, April and May.
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