Newsletter - Weather Briefs: How Weather Affects Litigation

New England suffered one of the third coldest Mays on record. The cold stormy weather was largely due to the three major Nor'easters that battered the New England Coast. The first came early in the month, hammering the area with 2 to 4 inches of rain and 50 to 60 mph winds. The last of the three storms lashed the area late in the month. Although the winds weren't quite as fierce with the third storm, falling trees caused more power outages and more damage to homes and cars than the first storm.

Since the trees were in full leaf by the time the third storm roared into the region, while early in the month they were still bare, much more damage was associated with the final storm. Leaves, of course, catch the wind much more efficiently than bare branches and so the limbs are more susceptible to snapping. That is the kind of a weather factor you might not think of yourself if you had a case involving wind damage, but it's the kind of thing the weather experts at AccuWeather can help you with.

A barn burned down due to spontaneous combustion that occurred after wet hay had been loaded into it. Hay must be dried before storage since wet hay promotes heat-generating bacteria, similar to what occurs in the composting process. When the owner of the barn filed suit against the farmer who was leasing the land, the AccuWeather Forensic Department was called in to determine how much and when rain had fallen on the property during the time the hay was bundled and sitting outside. Using Doppler radar data, we determined that a small but locally heavy thunderstorm passed in the vicinity of the farm during the period of time in question. Precise matching of the location of the farm in relation to the radar image revealed that some of the heavy rain briefly fell on the hay as the storm passed a short time before the hay was loaded into the barn. The ability of the Doppler technology to tally rainfall totals enabled us to determine how much water fell onto the hay during the crucial period.