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The size of the hail that hit Timaru in a storm in November 2019, causing more than $170 million in damage.
Multi-million dollar insurance payouts for fires and a storm were big news in The Timaru Herald during November, writes Doug Sail in an ongoing review of 2020. The insurance bill for Timaru’s 2019 hailstorm reached $170.98m in November making it New Zealand’s costliest weather event this century. The Insurance Council of New Zealand’s (ICNZ) figures released a few days before the one-year anniversary of the storm, listed the hailstorm in the top five of the most expensive natural disasters since it began keeping records in 1968.