Over the last 12 months, significant and often devastating weather events have caused widespread destruction and loss of life, such as the tornadoes, dust storms, and wildfires across multiple U.S. states in March 2025, or Hurricane Helene which was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina and caused an estimated US$78.7 billion in damages (source: NOAA NCEI). Continued research, especially in the field of extreme event attribution science, has shown that climate change is intensifying extreme weather events and making them more destructive.
As severe weather events become more intense, they present a growing risk to critical infrastructure, including solar farms. For example, Hurricane Milton spawned tornadoes that tore through a solar farm in Florida, while a hailstorm damaged thousands of modules on a utility-scale farm in Texas. These climate anomalies not only disrupt energy production but can increase hazards for personnel on-site, operational costs, and insurance burdens for asset owners.
This article analyzes U.S. NOAA data from the last 25 years to understand trends in three weather events that cause damage to solar farms: tornados, high wind events, and hail. These events often occur in conjunction with each other or during natural disasters, requiring a dynamic response process to keep workers safe and decrease time-to-response. It is important to note that flooding and significant precipitation events are also problematic for solar projects, causing damage, equipment access, erosion, and other issues. Those events will be analyzed in the next article of this series.
Understanding Severe Weather Trends
An analysis of severe weather event data reveals an interesting trend - while the annual counts of weather events do not seem to be increasing over time, the intensity of certain weather events are increasing. For example, the annual incidence of hailstorms do not show an upwards trend, but the percentage of hailstorms where the hailstone was 2 inches or larger in diameter has increased significantly over time. In fact, 12% of hailstorms in 2024 had hailstones with 2 inch-plus diameters, compared to 4% in the year 2000. High wind events, often part of a larger weather event, have also seen a steady increase over time as storms intensify with climate change.
Beyond hailstorms and high wind events, the U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters study by NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has observed a significant increase in the annual incidence of weather and climate disasters causing more than US$1B worth of damage (CPI-adjusted), with 27 such disasters causing US$182.7B of damage in 2024 alone.
Severe storm events (tornado outbreaks, high wind, hailstorms) and tropical cyclones make up a majority of the US$1B disasters each year and are the primary driver of the increase in US$1B disasters over the past several decades. An analysis of the top 10 states by 2024 count of US$1B disasters reveals a similar trend by state, with significant increases in the frequency of these destructive storms over the last 25 years.
State | 2024 Count of $1B disasters | Per year growth (25-year CAGR) | Last 25 year annual average | Last 5 year annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|
TX | 18 | 12.26% | 5 | 12 |
GA | 11 | 7.69% | 3.44 | 8.8 |
OH | 11 | 10.51% | 2.6 | 6.6 |
FL | 11 | 10.51% | 2.32 | 6.4 |
IL | 10 | 10.07% | 3.4 | 6.6 |
PA | 10 | 6.94% | 2.8 | 7 |
LA | 9 | 9.19% | 2.24 | 5.6 |
NY | 9 | 10.02% | 2.2 | 5 |
VA | 8 | 9.46% | 2.72 | 7 |
NC | 8 | 9.46% | 2.8 | 6.6 |
Tornadoes: Unpredictable with high potential for damage
Tornadoes have long been one of the most dangerous weather events in the U.S., posing risks to both human life and infrastructure. Being a historically tornado-prone county does not necessarily mean your assets would be guaranteed to be hit by a tornado, and similarly, being in a historically not tornado-prone county does not necessarily mean your assets would not be exposed to tornado risk. While there is ongoing research into the potential impact of climate change on tornados, tornados are highly unpredictable and can be problematic if they were to spawn near and on solar farms. For example, the tornado spawned by Hurricane Milton that caused damage on the 62MW solar farm in Florida occurred in Highlands County, which sees an average of 0.52 tornadoes per year (based on the last 25 years) and is in the 36th percentile of Florida counties that have observed tornados since the year 2000.
Of course, some counties have seen more tornadoes than the average U.S. county, with 348 counties seeing a 25-year average tornado count of 1 or more tornadoes per year. The top 10 counties see more than 2.5 tornadoes per year, on average:
State | County | Last 25 year annual average frequency |
|---|---|---|
CO | Washington | 5.44 |
CO | Weld | 3.8 |
FL | Palm Beach | 3.32 |
TX | Harris | 3.08 |
MS | Hinds | 3 |
CO | Elbert | 2.96 |
KS | Ford | 2.92 |
MS | Rankin | 2.92 |
CO | Adams | 2.84 |
AL | Mobile | 2.56 |
What we have typically perceived as “tornado alley” has shifted eastward, with states in the Plains (e.g. Oklahoma and Texas) seeing a relative decrease in the tornados and states in the Deep South or Ohio River Valley (e.g. Louisiana, Kentucky, and Mississippi) seeing relative increases in tornados. That said, the ten states with the highest 25-year average of annual tornado occurrence continue to be a mix of states between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountain ranges:
As tornados can occur at any time and anywhere where conditions are favorable for the severe thunderstorms that spawn them, a solar-specific preparation and response plan for tornados must be flexible and focus on both speed & safety.
High Wind Events: Accompanied by Others
As storms intensify, high wind events are becoming increasingly widespread. An analysis of high wind events—categorized as "High Wind," "Strong Wind," and "Thunderstorm Wind" in the NOAA dataset— reveals a discernible upwards trend in the U.S. over the past 25 years with a compounded annual growth rate of 1.83% and 25,371 incidents reported in 2024 versus 16,123 incidents in 2000.
An analysis by each U.S. state reveals that 40 out of 50 states are experiencing more wind events now than they were 25 years ago. The figure below plots the 25-year CAGR and the 25-year annual average high wind event count to compare change in wind events and which states are currently the most exposed. Texas and Kansas lead the way with the highest wind events per year, while the Rocky Mountain States of Utah and Idaho are seeing the fastest growth in wind events each year.
Wind events are often caused by or are accompanied by other destructive weather events, such as tornados, hurricanes, and hailstorms. With climate change driving an intensification of storms and other weather events, high wind can increase the different ways infrastructure can be damaged by extreme weather. For solar specifically, there could be structural damage to panels and racking systems, and hail damage can be intensified by high wind speeds. Over the last 25 years, 94% of hailstorms with stones larger than 2 inches in diameter were accompanied by high wind events – this magnifies risks like hailstorms and increases the likelihood of damage from hail.
Hailstorms: Increasing in Size and Severity
Among the many extreme weather threats, hailstorms continue to be one of the most problematic for solar operators. Hailstorms can be both destructive and garner high public attention, such as those in Pecos and Fort Bend counties within Texas. Larger hailstone diameters and stronger winds increase the kinetic energy of the hailstone, which increases the likelihood of damage to the PV module.
Over the past 25 years, the percentage of hailstorms producing stones larger than 2 inches has steadily climbed. The average hailstone diameter has grown from 1.09 inches to 1.31 inches during the same period. Studies increasingly link the growing average size of hailstones to global climate change. The combination of high-velocity winds and large hail increases the likelihood of damage to solar modules, trackers, and balance-of-system components.
Texas currently ranks first in average annual severe hailstorm counts, followed by Kansas and Nebraska. The 2025 Raptor Maps Global Solar Report underscores this impact—solar assets in ERCOT experienced 16x more damaged modules per MWdc than those in NYISO, the least affected U.S. power market. While damaged equipment can result from various causes, such wide-ranging module data provides a strong proxy for weather-related risk by geography.
Interestingly, when viewed by county, some of the most frequently hit areas include counties in Colorado and South Dakota. Conversely, Fort Bend County, which saw a hailstorm cause significant damage to a 350 MW solar farm, only sees about 0.31 severe hail storms per year on average.
State | County | 2024 frequency | 25 year average annual frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
SD | Pennington | 2 | 4.88 |
CO | El Paso | 1 | 3.73 |
TX | Tarrant | 12 | 3.62 |
CO | Yuma | 6 | 3.23 |
TX | Denton | 15 | 3.15 |
SD | Meade | 4 | 3.04 |
NE | Lincoln | 1 | 2.96 |
CO | Washington | 9 | 2.96 |
CO | Weld | 3 | 2.85 |
TX | Collin | 3 | 2.73 |
As hail severity trends upward, the industry is seeing higher premiums and an urgent need for operational preparedness. Tactics like automated hail stowing, paired with real-time visual monitoring technologies, are helping owners respond faster and limit damage—ultimately reducing inspection, remediation, and claims friction.
Mitigating the Risk: How Solar Companies Can Prepare
Due to the variable and often unpredictable nature of extreme weather events, a multi-pronged strategy will enable owners and operators to flexibly adapt to intensifying weather events and mitigate damage to their assets over the lifetime of the project. As solar assets have at least 25 years of operating life, managing weather risk will be critical to the long-term success of the project.
Understand your risk exposure at the site-level:
Leverage historical data and weather modeling sources to assess risk exposure in order to inform decisions during both the design and operations phases. If you know you are exposed to potential 100-year or 500-year storms, prepare ahead of time and hire a stormwater-focused engineer to do a stormwater study and understand your site’s flooding risk. Consider other factors such as snow, wildfire particulate soiling, and tropical storms.
Design with resilience in mind:
Consider site risks when selecting equipment, such as more resilient modules or trackers with automated hail stowing technology. For inverters, consider operational temperature limits as well as pad location, design, and height for flood-prone areas.
Develop robust pre-event and post-event operational plans:
Understand the claims process and the data required by insurers
Identify opportunities to collect data before weather events in order to create a pre-event baseline view of the asset and compare before & after.
Develop and align POAs for all groups that are involved in the event in order to streamline responses from each involved stakeholder.
Consider remote visual monitoring solutions
Remote visual monitoring solutions allow you to remotely gain visibility on the site without sending someone to the site of interest. However, traditional solutions, such as a security camera system, are limited by its static nature. The rise of remotely commanded drones and other robotics provide more mobile forms of remote visual monitoring - providing a faster and safer means of responding to weather events on-site, without needing to send personnel.
For example, RS Sentry is a visual AI agent that remotely commands drones and other robotics on-site to collect information for analysis. Through livestream functionality, users can see their assets in real-time as the drone flies around the site in order to rapidly assess site conditions. This remote-first response cuts down the time to uncover what is happening on-site and reduces worker exposure to potentially hazardous situations. The Sentry agent also triggers missions to collect and analyze visual data before and after the weather event to streamline remediation and claims.
Preparing for extreme weather and beyond
From construction to decommissioning, solar assets are exposed to a wide variety of risks that require creative resourcing to efficiently manage. As the climate warms, extreme weather events that pose threats to solar infrastructure are likely to increase in frequency and severity, which increases both the urgency of asset owners to adopt risk mitigation strategies and the urgency of the solar industry to continue driving the energy transition forward.
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