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<br />It's clear that to maintain a degree of coherence and <br />usefulness of crop-hail insurance claim data, we will have to <br />continue making comparisons based upon the current target. area <br />divisions in place whereby the WKWMP breaks into a northern target <br />area and a southern target area, the southern area being the former <br />WKWMP target area---anything south of NW Kansas GMD #4 district <br />boundaries. Also, it will give GMD *4 information they will need to <br />help determine how well the WKWMP is working for them as years pass. <br /> <br />For the Southern target area, Table 3 shows the historic yearly <br />hail claim totals for the 23 years dating from 1975, the year in <br />which the WKWMP began. 1997 was ranked 10th from the top of the year <br />with the greatest number of claims, 1996, putting it well down in <br />rankings, near mid-range. Table 3 also shows the historic <br />variability of county participation. <br /> <br />Table 4 shows the 6 days in the 1997 season which produced the <br />greatest numbers of hail claims in each of the Northern and Southern <br />target areas and for the total WKWMP. Whereas, Table 5 provies a <br />county breakdown of the 6 most-damaging days within the WKWMP target <br />area as one region. The percentage of hail-claims of these six days <br />to the total number of WKWMP claims is 61.2%, almost equaling the <br />63.2% average for all years dating back to 1985. The reader may <br />wonder why, if we're successful in reducing hail on the 'big' hail- <br />days, is this ratio not lower. The answer is that until our hail <br />suppression efforts become radically much better in the future, if <br />increased hail reduction is occurring on the large hail-days, it is <br />also occurring on smaller hail-days, in some proportional manner. <br />So, it is more of a relative thing at this point. Total numbers of <br />claims are more important than percentages. <br /> <br />Tables 6, 7 and 8 show the distribution of hail claims within <br />the targ,et area. Again, the reader is cautioned that the numbers <br />shown here are not an absolute indication of how well our program <br />works. That is, it is unrealistic to see Western Kansas counties <br />with no hail damage occurring during a season. The major goal is to <br />attempt to minimize overall crop-hail damage. A case in point is <br />Stevens County. Last year Stevens County had 727 hail claims, second <br />highest in the state behind Sheridan County's 748. However, when <br />data became available in April 1997, we found that losses as a <br />percentage of the amount insured crop, was well below its long-term <br />average percentage of crop loss. In other words, there may have been <br />a seemingly high number of hail damage claims, but the overall <br />losses were well below normal. Furthermore, it should be noted that <br />the claims in the partially participating counties in the Northern <br />target area have been adjusted to account only for that portion of <br />each county included ~ithin the WKWMP target area. <br /> <br />Table 9 shows the most damaging hail-days in each season of the <br />most recent 13 in which the WKWMP has been operating. Looking at the <br />the raw numbers of hail claims, it's difficult to glean anything <br /> <br />30 <br />