A two-and-a-half-week stretch of severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and hail across the United States and Canada cost insurers an estimated mid-single-digit billions of dollars between June 1 and June 17, according to a report released this week by reinsurance broker Gallagher Re. The losses extend an 11-year run in which annual US severe convective storm (SCS) costs have topped $20 billion, even as 2026 continues to run below recent historical averages for the peril.
The storms struck major metro areas from Denver to New York, combining tornadoes, large hail and a confirmed derecho — a long-lived, fast-moving windstorm — into one of the costliest stretches of any peril so far this year, Gallagher Re said. The broker estimated that total direct economic losses, including uninsured and underinsured damage, will run 20% to 25% higher than the insured loss figure.
The US Storm Prediction Center logged at least 3,590 damaging severe weather reports across 43 states and Washington, DC, during the period, Gallagher Re said, citing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Damaging straight-line winds accounted for 2,901 of those reports, followed by 515 hail reports and 174 tornado reports; some reports may double-count individual tornadoes. The National Weather Service separately confirmed 71 tornadoes for the period, including three rated EF3, the second-highest rating on the Enhanced Fujita damage scale.
The most destructive episode was a multi-day outbreak from June 9 to June 12 that produced a derecho across Wisconsin and Illinois on June 10, cutting power to nearly 400,000 customers. The next day, two separate EF3 tornadoes touched down in Illinois, one of which damaged at least 79 homes near Streator, and a third EF3 struck Porter County, Indiana. State Farm, a large US home insurer, said it had received more than 12,000 home and auto claims as of June 15 from the June 6-13 storms alone, spanning Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas and Ohio.
Earlier in the month, hail measuring 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) or larger struck more than 32,000 housing units in the Denver metro area on June 1 and nearly 20,000 housing units in the Dallas-Fort Worth area on June 2, based on radar-derived hail swath analysis cited in the report.
In Canada, insured losses from the period are expected to reach into the hundreds of millions of US dollars, concentrated in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Manitoba Public Insurance had received roughly 20,000 claims as of the report's release following an intense hail event in the greater Winnipeg region on June 9, Gallagher Re said. The broker noted the event could rank among Manitoba's largest insured catastrophes on record, potentially rivaling an August 2023 Winnipeg-area thunderstorm that cost Canadian insurers close to C$420 million (about $300 million) in today's dollars.
Saskatchewan Government Insurance had logged at least 2,000 claims tied to hail damage in Regina. A separate EF3 tornado near Oxbow, Saskatchewan — only the sixth on record in the province since 1980 — lasted more than 20 minutes.
US SCS insured losses for 2026 stood at $22 billion as of June 18, Gallagher Re said. Despite the intensity of the stretch, the losses are below the five-year H1 average of $38 billion and the 10-year H1 average of $30 billion. However, this marks the 11th straight year that annual US SCS losses have exceeded $20 billion. On an inflation-adjusted basis, 2026 ranks as the ninth-costliest first half for US SCS losses on record, and 11th-costliest on a normalized basis that accounts for present-day exposure and economic factors, according to the report.
The pattern fits a longer-running shift in how the industry views catastrophe risk. Speaking in April about Gallagher Re's first-quarter 2026 natural catastrophe report, chief science officer Steve Bowen said, "Most of the conversations now are around flood and severe convective storm," rather than perils that once dominated industry discussion, such as European windstorm.
In Saskatchewan, the current stretch carries an added financial deadline. Under rules set by the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation, farmers must seed their spring crops by June 20 to qualify for coverage, leaving a narrow window to assess and replant hail-damaged fields before losing eligibility for the program.
