London, Ontario — How’s the weather been lately? Not great—and the data can prove it. Extreme weather events like tornadoes and hailstorms are reaching a frequency in Canada higher than ever before, adding to the number of drivers who will be in more regular need of emergency vehicle repairs.
According to an article first published in the Conversation Canada, data from the Northern Tornadoes Project discovered that current expectations for insured catastrophic loss value at $2 billion. This is nearly double the insured loss values recorded between 1983 and 2008, where the average of $422 million converts to $1.1 billion in modern currency.
This turbulent weather has direct implications for the collision repair industry, for better or worse. In the past few months, Collision Repair has reported on numerous instances of severe weather damaging vehicles, some of which include hail in Mantitoba, a lightning storm in Ontario and hailstorms in Alberta.
In most cases, vehicles were dented by falling debris like blocks of hail or tree branches broken during storms. Lightning storms were also notable for potentially taking out the power grids that shops rely on.
While the Northern Tornadoes Project says that extreme weather and global warming are ongoing issues, they highlight that data is insufficient to confirm a link between the two phenomena.
For more information about severe and extreme weather in Canada, visit Northern Tornadoes Project’s open data dashboard here.
