Windiest City is NOT Chicago
The windiest city in the United States is not Chicago, but rather Jackson, Mississippi according to CoreLogic’s catastrophe model rankings just released. This ranking report offers the national rating for the windiest cities in the nation. It calculates the total force for wind events starting as far back as 2006 that are caused by all 60 mph or more wind gusts.
CoreLogic analyzed over 290 cities and assigned a 1 to 100 numerical score from the data that was captured the city center as well as a radius of 10 miles between 2006 and 2015. Also accounted for was the number of wind events that happened in this time period.
Jackson came in as the leading spot on the list, based on these factors, with over 150 wind events since Jan 2006 and a maximum 99 mph wind speed which ranked it 95 on CoreLogic’s ranking chart. Second on the list was Springfield, Missouri with over 128 wind events, followed by Boston with over 120 wind events.
For this 9-year time frame, Chicago (nicknamed ‘The Windy City’), hit number 50 based on this catastrophe modeling firm.
According to CoreLogic’s global head of hazard product development, Lindene Patton, various data sources were taken by the company to compile the report which included news reports, home weather stations, photos and Twitter alerts for analyzing the data at a level that was more property-specific.
She says that many of the risk decisions are presently based on radar data associated with ‘wind off the ground’ incidents and not based off of specific geological points and what happens on the ground.
Since urban areas have data sources that are more reliable, CoreLogic looked at the cities that had 100,000 or more residents in population, says Patton. Tornado events were not measured since they are short, sporadic and have specific meteorological conditions.
Wind events are separated by the insurance industry and different rules apply to claims and coverage. Patton says they were really looking at wind at a granular level. With all this data in front of us, it is now more than ever important for business owners to be protected with business property insurance and general liability insurance to protect their business against wind damage. Other policies, such as commercial umbrella insurance, can be added to fill in any gaps. Since wind events can be unpredictable, a small business stands to benefit from this type of insurance.
