Thoughts From The WIND Conference

I attended the WIND conference in Dallas TX last Tuesday. Unfortunately, my American Airlines flight had some difficulties and I was delayed for four hours and had to miss most of the morning! However, I did get there in time to hear an excellent presentation on the appraisal process in Texas, Florida and Colorado. The discussion featured an illustrious panel of lawyers on the defense and plaintiffs sides and it was very informative. Later in the afternoon, I learned a lot about hail damage from a presentation that featured a forensic meteorologist, lawyers from the plaintiff and defense side, and a couple of engineers. 

How Hail Forms

Did you know that hail forms when air circulates upward from the bottom of a cloud to the higher/colder regions and this upward circulating air captures rain droplets and brings them higher up into the atmosphere where they freeze forming ice particles. These ice particles are then recirculated down to the lower level where they pick up more moisture, which they take  back up to the higher level where they freeze and get larger. After they repeat this process a sufficient number of times, they fall to the earth as hail. As a result, the ice actually freezes from the inside out and develops from the inside out, making it very hard. Because of this, hail can cause great damage.

Tools for Determining the Existence of Hail

We also learned that many of the tools that we have for determining whether Hale has been occurring in an area are imperfect and one must often look at a number of different tools in order to prove that hail occurred in a certain place. For instance, radar has a harder time picking up dry particles of hail as opposed to wet hail because dry hail is less reflective. In addition, a radar rotates and doesn't pick up hail in areas where the signal is not currently rotating. In addition, radar beams start out lower to the ground and then get higher as they proceed outward from the radar. As a result, they measure different altitudes and can miss hail that is occurring in altitudes that are not being measured. As a result, the fact that a radar does not show hail is not dispositive. A good assessment should include as many factors as possible, including eyewitness accounts if available.

Of course, as Pat McGinnis, a claimant's attorney, pointed out, the insurance industry seems to be demanding more and more absolute proof in order to prove that hail occurred as opposed to just proof that it was more likely than not. In addition, insurers commonly rely on their own hail strike reports masquerading as scientific analyses but contain disclaimers and do not reveal the information upon which they are based. 

Problems With Insurance Company Analysis of Hail Damage

Doctor Neil Hall discussed some of the problems with the insurance industry's approach to assessment of hail damage. One problem is an erroneous viewpoint that has arisen out of an engineering paper that was presented by two engineers from Haig Engineering that served as the basis for a common assumption that hail has to be larger than one inch in order to cause damage. This paper was not peer-reviewed and was based on tests performed using laboratory ice. Laboratory ice is not as hard as natural ice because it freezes from the outside in. As a result, it fractures and breaks apart much more easily than natural hail. When natural hail strikes a surface, even a concrete driveway, it bounces and doesn't fracture easily. Because of this, hail smaller than an inch can cause damage.

In addition, Haig Engineering developed a definition of hail damage that focused on functional damage. Haig does a lot of work for insurance companies, including State Farm. However, “direct physical loss,” the relevant language in most property and homeowners policies, covers any damage, not just damage that is defined as functional by Haig. Damage is simply any change from the pre-loss condition of the building. However, the Haig definition would require more than that required by the policy. 

In addition, some of the Haig research papers suggest that bruising or fracturing of the mat is required in order for a shingle to be damaged. However, the degranulation of the shingle should be enough. At least one Haig paper has admitted that de-granularization is damage and the IBHS (the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety),  an insurer-funded research group, defines loss of granules as one type of damage. 

While many policies do not do so, some insurance companies have started excluding cosmetic damage and otherwise incorporating this definition of functional damage into their policies. In addition, many policies now contain high roof deductibles. As a result, it is important to examine your policy in this area. 

Please contact us if you need help with your commercial or home hail damage claim.