In Which U.S. State are 5 of the Top 10 Tornado Risk Metro Areas?

The ability to predict where tornadoes are more likely to strike becomes more attractive in a year that has seen over 1200 of the funnel clouds and over $1.1 billion in property damage. What state do your underwriters think has more high-risk zones?

CDS Business Mapping, a provider of hazard mapping, today announced its list of the top ten tornado prone metro-areas, through the company's RiskMeter Online service, which matches natural hazards to addresses or geographic coordinates on an ad hoc or automated batch basis. This year's list takes on added significance in light of the fact that, as CDS Business Mapping reports:

The 2011 tornado season has been extremely active and has already surpassed last year's totals for number of tornadoes (1,282) and damage ($1.1 billion). In the first six months of 2011 alone, there were approximately 1,600 tornadoes that caused an estimated $10 billion dollars worth of insured property damage, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

If I were an underwriter, just hearing about the existence of such a list would motivate me check just how exposed my company was in places such as Texas, Kansas and Arkansas. However, I was surprised to see which state had the most metro areas on the list:

1.) Denver, CO (rural area outside city to the northeast)

2.) Hialeah, FL

3.) Miami, FL

4.) Hollywood, FL

5.) Aurora, CO

6.) Houston, TX

7.) Commerce City, CO

8.) Tampa, FL

9.) St. Petersburg, FL

10.) North Little Rock, AR

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio