Tornadoes, Wind and Water: What Property Owners Should Know as Storm Losses Keep Getting Worse

Storms are hitting harder, hitting more often, and hitting places that did not used to worry much about them.

Over the last several years we have watched the pattern change in our own caseload. More wind. More hail. More tornadoes in the Great Lakes and the upper Midwest. More trees through roofs. And — increasingly — more water, because once a roof system fails, the storm damage is only the beginning of the loss.

At Liss + Earls, first-party property insurance claims are the only thing we handle, and we have never represented an insurance company. We represent homeowners, businesses and commercial property owners throughout Michigan and Ohio, and we accept select large-value property claims throughout the country through pro hac vice admission. This article covers what we are seeing in storm losses, the damage patterns that cause the most trouble on claims, why the legal landscape differs from state to state, and why the right time to call a lawyer is usually earlier than people think.

Severe Storms Are Getting More Frequent and More Expensive

The insurance industry groups tornadoes, hail and damaging straight-line winds together as “severe convective storms.” That category has quietly become the most expensive weather peril in the United States… bigger, in most years now, than hurricanes.

The numbers behind that shift are striking. Severe convective storms were the leading source of insured losses in the United States in the first half of 2026, with major brokers estimating somewhere between $22 billion and $27 billion in insured losses in the first six months alone. A single multi-state outbreak in March caused at least $2.3 billion in insured damage across 14 states. After an August derecho tore across the Midwest with 100 mph winds, year-to-date U.S. severe storm losses were estimated to have passed $35 billion.

And here is the part that matters most: even in a year forecasters described as relatively quiet by recent standards, 2026 marked the eleventh consecutive year that U.S. severe convective storm losses topped $20 billion. This is not an unusual year anymore. This is the baseline.

The Map has Moved

The other change is geographic. Historically, tornado risk was associated with the southern Plains and the Deep South. In 2026 the activity concentrated in the Midwest and Great Lakes instead.

Illinois confirmed 210 tornadoes — more than three times its yearly average, and an all-time record for the state. Indiana broke a record that had stood since 2011. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania both had among their top five tornado years on record. Michigan and Ohio saw repeated rounds of damaging wind, hail and tornadoes throughout the spring and summer, along with widespread, long-duration power outages.

Note: Why the geography matters to your claim. When severe storms hit regions that historically saw fewer of them, several things follow at once. The building stock is older and less likely to have been constructed to modern wind standards. Property owners have less experience with how windstorm claims get adjusted. And insurers surge in large numbers of out-of-state catastrophe adjusters who may be unfamiliar with local construction costs and local practice. Each of those factors, on its own, increases the chance a legitimate claim gets undervalued.

Severe storm claims tend to follow recognizable patterns. Understanding them helps explain why two properties with similar-looking damage can end up with very different insurance outcomes.

The Damage We See Most and Where Claims Go Wrong

Downed trees and trees through roofs

Large mature trees are one of the most common causes of catastrophic residential and commercial storm damage in the Midwest, and one of the most commonly disputed. A tree that falls onto a structure can crush roof framing, breach the building envelope, damage siding and windows, destroy vehicles and outbuildings, and take utility service with it.

Claims involving fallen trees raise questions that are not always intuitive: what portion of debris removal is covered and up to what limit, whether coverage differs when a tree falls without striking a structure, how the loss is handled when the tree came from a neighboring property, and whether the tree fell because of the storm or because of a pre-existing condition in the tree itself. Insurers routinely raise decay, disease and prior damage as reasons to reduce or deny these claims.

Structural damage from a tree strike is also frequently more extensive than the initial inspection suggests. Impact loads transfer through framing. Trusses, rafters and roof decking can be compromised well beyond the visible point of contact, and that damage is often not found until demolition begins — long after the first estimate was written.

Roof damage — the loss that keeps producing more loss

Roofs absorb the worst of a windstorm. Shingles lift and tear away, seams and flashing fail, membrane systems on flat commercial roofs peel or puncture, ridge and hip components separate, and fasteners withdraw. Hail bruises shingles in ways that shorten roof life without necessarily looking dramatic from the ground.

Roof claims generate more disputes than almost any other category of storm damage, and the recurring arguments are familiar to anyone who handles them: that the damage is cosmetic rather than functional; that it reflects wear, tear and deterioration rather than the storm; that only the damaged slope requires repair even when matching materials are no longer manufactured; and that the payment should be limited to depreciated value rather than the cost to actually replace the system.

These disagreements are worth real money on a residential roof. On a commercial building with a large membrane roof, they are worth a great deal more.

Water intrusion after the roof fails

This is the issue we see cause the most damage and the most conflict, and it is why we tell people not to wait.

Once a roof is compromised, the building is open to the weather. Rain enters through lifted shingles, torn membrane, displaced flashing or an impact breach and moves down through the structure — into insulation, decking, framing, ceilings, drywall, flooring, electrical and mechanical systems, and contents. In a commercial building it reaches inventory, equipment, tenant improvements, and sometimes multiple tenants’ property.

Water damage of this kind creates several problems on a claim at once:

It is progressive. Damage continues developing for days or weeks after the storm, and continues with every subsequent rainfall until the building is properly dried in.
It hides. Moisture travels laterally through cavities and assemblies and shows up far from the point of entry. Damage inside wall and ceiling assemblies is routinely missed on a first walkthrough.
It leads to mold. Microbial growth can begin quickly in wet building materials, and mold is frequently subject to separate policy limits, sublimits or exclusions.
It invites causation fights. Insurers commonly argue that interior water damage resulted from long-term leakage, deferred maintenance, or a failure to protect the property after the loss, rather than from the storm.

That last point is the one that costs policyholders the most. The gap between “the storm opened the roof and the rain came in” and “this building had a chronic leak” is the difference between a paid claim and a denied one, and it is decided by evidence gathered early.

More on our water damage claims page and our storm damage claims page.

Power loss, spoilage and habitability

Severe Midwest storms now regularly produce outages measured in hundreds of thousands of customers and lasting days. Extended outages can render a home uninhabitable, spoil restaurant and grocery inventory, shut down manufacturing, and disable sump pumps and building systems — which can produce yet more water damage. Whether any of that is covered depends on the policy, and on endorsements that many owners do not know they have or do not have.

Commercial and Large-Loss Storm Claims

Our firm has represented commercial property owners across the Midwest in significant wind and storm losses — including buildings where roof systems were partially or entirely removed by wind, exposing the interior to rain and forcing operations to shut down while the structure was rebuilt.

These are different cases from residential claims, and not only because of the dollars. A large commercial roof loss typically involves competing engineering opinions on wind speed and failure mechanism, disputes over whether a roof system can be repaired or must be replaced, arguments about code-required upgrades triggered during reconstruction, questions about whether damage to a membrane or fastening system is functional or cosmetic, and a business income claim that runs in parallel with the property claim and is often larger than it.

Commercial policies also raise issues that rarely surface in residential losses: blanket versus scheduled limits, coinsurance provisions, the definition of the period of restoration, extended business income, contingent business interruption when a supplier or anchor tenant is damaged, service interruption coverage when utilities are down, and how multiple locations are treated under a single program.

We handle these losses in Michigan and Ohio, and we take select large-value commercial claims elsewhere in the country through pro hac vice admission, associating with experienced local counsel. Since 1986 our firm has recovered an estimated $500 million in verdicts, settlements and insurance claim payments for policyholders.

See our business interruption claims page and our property insurance practice overview.

The Law Governing Storm Claims Is Not the Same Everywhere

Most property owners assume insurance law works roughly the same way across the country. It does not, and the differences can be significant.

Tornado, wind and hail damage is generally covered under standard homeowners and commercial property policies as windstorm damage. But coverage is only the beginning. What happens when a carrier denies, delays or underpays a claim is largely a matter of state law, and states have taken meaningfully different approaches to nearly every question that matters. In broad terms:

Remedies for unreasonable claim handling differ. Some states allow policyholders to pursue relief beyond the policy benefits themselves when an insurer handles a claim unreasonably. Others take a narrower approach and rely primarily on contract remedies together with statutory protections. Michigan and Ohio, for example, approach this question quite differently from one another, which matters a great deal to a property owner with buildings in both states.
Deadlines differ, and they are shorter than people expect. Property policies typically contain their own time limit for bringing suit, often far shorter than the general statute of limitations for a contract. States vary in how those provisions are applied and in what circumstances may affect them. Missed deadlines are one of the most common ways a legitimate claim is lost.
Appraisal works differently. Most policies contain an appraisal provision for resolving disagreements about the amount of loss. States differ on when appraisal may be compelled and on the scope of what an appraisal panel may decide. Whether appraisal is helpful or harmful in a given claim depends on the facts and on the jurisdiction.
Valuation rules differ. How replacement cost and actual cash value are calculated, how depreciation is applied, how mismatched materials are handled when an exact match is unavailable, and how code-required upgrades are treated are all areas where state law and regulation diverge. On a large loss these differences can be substantial.
Deadlines and penalties imposed on insurers differ. Many states impose timeframes for acknowledging, investigating and paying claims, sometimes with interest or fee-shifting consequences. The strength of those provisions varies widely from state to state.

None of this is legal advice, and none of it can substitute for review of your actual policy and the law of your state. The reason we raise it is simpler: the correct approach to a storm claim in one state is not necessarily the correct approach in another, and that is worth knowing before decisions get made.

For an overview of how we approach claim-handling disputes, see our bad faith insurance page, our insurance appraisal page, and our Ohio property insurance page.

Why Calling Early Makes a Difference

Most people contact a lawyer after a denial letter arrives. By then the record has largely been built — and the insurance company built most of it.

The early weeks of a storm claim produce the documentation, statements and inspection findings that everything afterward depends on. Several things that happen in that window are difficult to undo later:

The first inspection sets the scope. What the initial adjuster records — and does not record — frames the entire dispute. Damage that is not documented early gets characterized later as unrelated, pre-existing, or caused by delay.
Water damage keeps developing. Evidence of how water entered and how far it traveled degrades quickly once drying, demolition and repairs begin.
Recorded statements are taken early. Often before an owner has seen the full extent of the damage or reviewed their own policy — and they are quoted back much later.
Examinations Under Oath change the posture of a claim. An EUO is a formal, transcribed proceeding, and policyholders are entitled to be represented by counsel. Learn more about the Examination Under Oath process.
Proof of loss requirements carry deadlines. Requirements and timing vary by policy and by state, and alleged defects can be raised long after the fact.
Payments, releases and appraisal demands have consequences. What a partial payment resolves — and what it does not — is not always clear from the paperwork.

Not every claim needs a lawyer. Many are handled fairly and paid properly, and we will tell you when we think that is what is happening. But if there is a real problem developing in your claim, it is far cheaper and far more effective to address it at the beginning than after a year of correspondence has hardened both sides.

Signs Your Storm Claim May Have a Legal Problem

The claim has been denied, in whole or in part
The estimate is substantially below what qualified contractors say the repairs will cost
The insurer is attributing damage to wear and tear, deterioration, pre-existing conditions, or “cosmetic” damage
You are told only the damaged slope or section will be repaired, leaving a mismatched roof or elevation
Interior water damage is being blamed on a long-term leak rather than the storm
Mold has appeared and is being treated as excluded or sublimited
You have received an Examination Under Oath demand
There is a dispute about debris removal, tree removal, or code-required upgrades
Weeks have passed with no meaningful response, repeated requests for documents already provided, or repeated adjuster reassignments
You are being pushed toward appraisal while coverage itself is still disputed
The loss is large or complex — commercial, industrial, multi-family, institutional, or a high-value residence
Your business was interrupted and the income loss is being questioned

Any one of these is a reasonable reason to have the claim reviewed. Several together usually mean the claim is already in dispute, whether or not anyone has used that word.

For Public Adjusters and Referring Attorneys

We work alongside public adjusters regularly. If you are managing a wind, roof or water loss and the carrier has denied coverage, demanded an Examination Under Oath, or refused to pay fair value, we handle the litigation while you continue managing the adjustment. We also accept referrals from attorneys who do not handle first-party property coverage work.

Learn how we work with public adjusters.

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Attorney Advertising. This content is general information only and is not legal advice. Viewing this page or contacting our firm does not create an attorney-client relationship. Insurance coverage and the law governing insurance claims vary significantly by state and by policy, and general statements here may not apply to your situation; nothing on this page should be relied upon as a statement of the law applicable to your claim. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter. Licensed in Michigan and Ohio. Available for select high-value property insurance claims nationwide through pro hac vice admission, subject to court approval and association with local counsel. Weather and industry loss figures reflect National Weather Service, NOAA Storm Prediction Center and published insurance industry reporting as of September 2026.