Severe Thunderstorms June 15-22

Update and Respond Shapefiles | Summary
Posting Date: June 22, 2023, 12:00:00 PM

A series of severe thunderstorm events have impacted the southern and central U.S. over the past week, following a significant large hail outbreak the previous week across parts of Texas and in particular the Dallas metroplex.  This round of storms kicked off late on the 15^th of June with a low-pressure system and associated frontal boundary situated over the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma.  That evening, a line of storms ripped through western Oklahoma, with reports of 2-4” hail in Lawton and Fort Sill.  The town of Perryton, Texas was also hit hard in this round, as an EF-3 tornado tore through the town causing extensive damage and casualties.  Damage and power outages were also reported in the area near Thackerville over to Sherman, TX.

Storms continued the following day, now in northeastern Texas, where wind gusts up to 60 mph and 1-2” hail were seen in storms that morning.  The system continued to the southeast, moving into the Gulf states that afternoon and into the 17^th.  The cities of Wayne and Greene in Mississippi saw hail in excess of 2.5”, and there were multiple reports of tornadoes.  Saturday also saw a trailing cold front push southeast across the southern Plains, leading to wind gusts in the range of 70-100 mph across the Tulsa, OK metro area, leading to damage and widespread power outages.  Elsewhere in Oklahoma, wind gusts of 84 mph in Norman, 80 mph in Walters, and gusts in the 60s in Jefferson, Kiowa, and Logan counties.  The strong winds in this region continued into Sunday, with the wind impacts spreading to Arkansas and Mississippi. And causing large hail and reported tornadoes in the latter.

Though the impacts of the system abated into this week, unsettled weather has continued.  Tuesday brought multiple reports of 2-3+” hail across the state of Louisiana.  Last night, more than 10 reports of tornadoes were received by the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, including that appears to be a major tornado impact in the small town of Matador, TX, where four people are reported killed and several buildings heavily damaged or destroyed.  In addition, damage has been observed from recent storms across Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, and parts of the northeast.

Verisk Property Claims Services (PCS) has so far designated three separate catastrophe events – 2348, 2349, and 2350 - for these outbreaks dating back to June 9^th.  Near real-time footprints for hail, straight-line wind, and tornado perils are available through Verisk Weather Solutions Respond analytics.  Respond™ data shapefiles for hail, wind, and tornado can be used to:

• Overlay on exposure data to understand which risks and total value that could be impacted
• Understand the likelihood of a claim at a given location
• Accelerate recovery and response efforts
• Help determine veracity of claims and avoid fraud

A sample of Respond shapefiles for this event – covering straight-line wind and tornado impacts from June 17 and 18 – are also available for download with this posting.  The straight-line wind files contain contours of maximum wind gust at a given location for that day, and the tornado files provide a first look, modeled view of the probability a tornado passed over a given location.  Instructions for importing the files into Touchstone’s Geospatial module are also included. These are samples of the full Respond™ product, which offers greater granularity in terms of wind speed contours and tornado probability.  This data is also available to subscribers in near-real time; Respond straight-line wind data is updated hourly, and the Tornado data is available within 15 minutes of touchdown, with updates every five minutes.

Please contact your Verisk representative if you have additional questions about this series of events or about Respond™.

Update and Respond Shapefiles | Downloads
Posting Date: June 22, 2023, 12:00:00 PM

The information provided herein is strictly confidential and is solely for the use of AIR clients; disclosure to others is prohibited.

Additional Downloads

Title	File Type	Description	Download
Verisk Respond Shapefiles	.zip	Sample Verisk Respond shapefiles for straight-line wind and tornado probability for June 17-18, with instructions for importing into Touchstone