As Major Hurricane Beryl dissipated after the remnant tropical depression moved over the U.S. Midwest and into Canada, Beryl left a legacy of three hurricane-strength landfalls in Grenada, Mexico, and Texas.
Such an early season and intense event as Beryl underlines the requirement for timely and accurate data to guide decisions and mitigate impacts, and real-time monitoring and analysis are crucial.
Beryl was an eight-time hurricane record breaker, including the earliest rapid intensification (a tropical storm depression to a Category 4 storm in just 48 hours), the earliest Category 5 hurricane, and the strongest hurricane in June and more.
A category 5 storm at its peak with sustained winds of 165 miles per hour (270 kilometers per hour), Beryl made landfall as a Category 4 major hurricane over Grenada's Carriacou Island on Monday, July 1.
Beryl caused extensive damage in the islands of the Lesser Antilles, especially Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago.
It progressed westward through the Caribbean Sea and produced storm surges, heavy rainfall, and wind damage across several Caribbean islands, including Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, Texas, and beyond.
As Moody’s RMS Event Response reported in their recent Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone outlook, the various meteorological agencies have forecast the season to be very active compared to the longer-term average. More events in a season highlight the need for robust preparedness and rapid event response capabilities.
Rapidly intensifying events such as Beryl, which strengthened from a tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in less than 48 hours indicate that insurers need to be able to respond swiftly to fast-evolving hurricane conditions, and this capability will be indispensable in the months ahead.
This blog will explore how HWind, a leading hurricane data and forecasting tool, integrated with ExposureIQ as part of Moody’s Intelligent Risk Platform, can track Hurricane Beryl in real-time and provide critical insights at speed.
The Challenge of Hurricane Response
Managing the impacts of hurricanes as seen with Beryl can present significant challenges for (re)insurers and catastrophe modelers.
Hurricanes are dynamic systems, whether early, mid, or late season, there are many examples of events that change rapidly in intensity, direction, and speed, requiring continuous monitoring and timely updates to maintain effective response strategies.
Accurate integration of multiple data sources is complex but crucial, impacting the reliability of risk assessments. Additionally, understanding the exposure and potential impact on portfolios, coordinating resources, managing financial implications, and ensuring clear communication with stakeholders are critical yet challenging aspects of hurricane response.
These challenges underscore the need for robust tools like HWind and ExposureIQ to provide comprehensive real-time monitoring, detailed analysis, and advanced visualization capabilities.
HWind: Powering Real-Time Monitoring and Detailed Analysis
HWind provides a comprehensive dataset for real-time monitoring of hurricane events, with forecasts providing insights into what the storm could do, snapshots of the current wind field, and cumulative footprint details of the impact so far.
As soon as the tropical storm was named, HWind generated regular information for Beryl as frequently as four times per day, until Beryl weakened to a tropical depression over the southwest U.S. on July 8, 2024.
HWind delivers many key benefits, including:
Advanced Forecasting: HWind’s forecasting products include five-day forecast track probabilities, gust probability metrics, individual forecast tracks, and associated hazard footprints. These tools help anticipate areas of likely claims, inform decisions about resource allocation, and prepare for potential losses.
Detailed Representations of the Wind Field: HWind produces detailed snapshots of a storm’s current wind field by aggregating data from over 30 sources including satellites, reconnaissance aircraft, coastal radars, and ocean buoys.
Interpolating between these snapshots generates a cumulative footprint representing the maximum wind speeds experienced by location to date, highlighting the areas that have experienced the most damaging winds. These footprints are updated on a rolling, cumulative basis four times daily, providing an accurate ongoing assessment of the storm’s impact.
Frequent Updates: HWind products are updated up to every six hours, providing consistent and timely updates throughout the storm’s life cycle. This allows for any changes in the forecast to be rapidly accounted for in your response and for impacts to be assessed immediately post-landfall.
ExposureIQ: Enhancing Risk Management
The ExposureIQ application integrates HWind data to offer a dynamic view of storms, enhancing exposure management capabilities with the following key benefits:
Real-Time Data Integration: ExposureIQ seamlessly incorporates real-time data from HWind, minimizing ‘data-taxiing’ and providing detailed views of storms through forecasts, snapshots, and footprints that can instantly be run against your portfolio.
Rapid Accumulation Results with Damage Bands: Damage factors can be set at a granular level covering building and hazard attributes. This feature generates quick insights on possible portfolio impacts against the live, in-force portfolio, allowing insurers to understand potential losses and make better-informed decisions.
Cross-Portfolio Accumulations: Users can manage insurance and reinsurance accumulations within one application, providing a comprehensive view across thousands of cedants and billions of locations for the true net of reinsurance view. This helps carriers quickly identify impacted cedants and estimate losses across the whole organization.
Comprehensive Risk Visualization: Advanced visualization tools in ExposureIQ enable users to understand the geographical distribution of risks. Detailed maps and charts illustrate how different areas are impacted by the storm, which helps in accurate risk assessments and mitigation strategies.
Integration of HWind and ExposureIQ: Practical Benefits
Centralized Data Access: Combining HWind’s real-time data with ExposureIQ’s exposure management capabilities provides a single platform for all necessary information, reducing manual data compilation.
Integrated Analysis and Reporting: Integrated data and processes speed up response times and improve decision-making, allowing quick assessment and resource deployment.
Collaborative Decision-Making: Real-time, interactive visualizations facilitate better team collaboration, enabling faster and more coordinated responses to evolving hurricane conditions.
Building Resilience Together
Integration of HWind with ExposureIQ provides a dynamic and comprehensive approach to real-time monitoring of events such as Major Hurricane Beryl. The combination offers detailed wind field footprints, continuous data integration, and interactive visualizations essential for accurate forecasts and effective response efforts.
As we face a potentially very active hurricane season, the ability to rapidly respond to such events is not just beneficial but necessary. By digitizing event response workflows, these tools enhance operational efficiency, streamline decision-making processes, and improve the overall response to hurricane events.
Each year, Moody’s RMS Event Response team monitors and responds to a wide range of natural catastrophes such as Hurricane Beryl.
Clients can access Event Response services, such as releases of event summaries, accumulation, and modeling information on Moody's Support Center.
