People are still counting the cost of Storm Darragh, but one man has been told by its insurers it wasn't really a storm.
Dennis Iliffe was refused compensation because wind speeds in his home town of Kidderminster did not reach 55 mph.
Mr Iliffe said he was “absolutely stunned” to learn that the wind which damaged his house was too slow at 3 km/h. Its insurer Ageas has been asked to comment.
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has confirmed that a storm is “a period of severe weather defined by wind speeds with gusts of at least 48 knots (55 mph)”.
Mr Iliffe was left £500 out of his pocket after replacing his aerial and repairing his chimney.
Regarding Ageas' refusal to pay, he said: “They didn't want to know. They said the gust was only 53 mph and it had to be 55 mph to be declared a storm.”
Some of Mr Iliffe's neighbors also suffered damage to their properties: other antennas were destroyed, masonry was damaged, tiles were torn out and another had the windows of his greenhouse torn out.
At least one of them ran into the same problems that Mr. Iliffe faces today.
Mr Iliffe was forced to compare his problem to so-called “force majeure”, which are traditionally cited by insurers as events they do not cover.
“You pay for insurance, you think you’re covered,” Mr. Iliffe said.
“But when you come and make a claim, they don’t want to pay.”
He admitted insurers might be wary of people using storms as an excuse to make a claim on properties already in need of repairs.
“Why the hell are you covered?” he asked. “If you have a fire, does the fire have to be a certain temperature? It's beyond belief.”
Was Storm Darragh worse due to the impact of human-caused climate change?
As a journalist, in answering this question, I have always said in the past that experts cannot say with certainty that any individual weather event is directly caused by climate change.
And that's because there have always been storms and floods, regardless of how the climate has changed.
However, scientists have worked hard to unravel all the complexities of severe weather mixed with the changes caused by global warming.
ClimaMeter is a website created by a team of researchers around the world that looks at severe weather events and then tells us in simple language what role climate change actually played in those events.
To do this, they compare measurements of similar storms in the past.
For Storm Darragh, scientists say climate change played a significant role.
The heavy rain and strong winds from Storm Darragh were locally “enhanced by human-caused climate change”.
They can even encrypt it all.
Researchers say storms like Darragh are 5% windier on Atlantic coasts and up to 5mm per day (or up to 10%) wetter due to climate change.
The terrible impact of Storm Darragh is therefore a consequence of the choices we make as a people.
On a personal level, this means everything from opposing local wind turbine or solar farm projects, to driving and flying on vacation.
On a wider scale, it's councils not pushing for more cycle routes, the role of fossil fuel companies and national governments not taking action to decarbonise our economies.
Storm Darragh was made worse by climate change. That's what the science says.
We either live with the impact of future storms and floods and watch them get worse, or we choose to change.
