Yesterday, the barista at our local Starbucks said, “That Rapture prediction was wrong for everyone but those in Joplin, Missouri.” That seemed like a cryptic comment until we heard the news and saw the terrible photos. Then, later yesterday, one of the most ominous purple and green cloud formations we’ve ever seen crested over Busch Stadium and the Gateway Arch, in front of the large bank of plate glass windows of the new Competitive Futures offices in downtown Saint Louis.

They tell us that April was Missouri’s worst month ever for tornadoes, and that Joplin is the most destructive tornado in history. The mainstream media is tapping into this fear, as per usual, asking why the weather has gone “cuckoo.”

Has weather gone “insane?” Is something happening? Is something wrong? Is something different? These kinds of questions make us at Competitive Futures turn off the television and go searching for long-term trend data to give us, and our clients, some guidance.

Risk management firm Aon has a team of climatologists, meteorologists, engineers and mathematicians that try to answer these questions for the reinsurance industry. Their recent report on global insured-loss weather events tells us that while last year featured the highest average temperatures on record since 1880, the longer-term trends do not indicate a significant change in weather patterns overall.

The trend global temperature is undeniable (National Climactic Data Center)

Let’s check the trends in storm systems elsewhere in the world.

Global tropical systems with winds lower than 74 miles per hour remain around the 25-year average:

Eastern Pacific hurricanes hover around the 25-year average, tracking a bit low in the past few years:

Western typhoons are following similar trends:

Finally, let’s put American tornadoes into that same perspective:

There are clearly some years of sharp spikes in tornado activity in the past decade, but if you look back a quarter-century, a clear trend of more numerous tornadoes is not yet emerging. This year could simply be an outlier. It is far too soon to tell if climate has “gone cuckoo.” The overall trends remain close to the global averages for the past twenty-five years.

This isn’t to say that the scale of the “damage” isn’t on the rise. Look at this graph from Munich Re describing the increase in insured-loss events:

The damages are clearly increasing – but then so is population and urbanization around the world. So when these events come up, they seem to be increasing in impact, since the total number of humans and the gross amount of their assets affected by these events are indeed getting larger. Once again, this does not mean that the world is by definition a more “insane” place to live.

There are two points to add here. First, the total increase in temperature is undeniable, and its future impact is poorly understood. This is why insurance companies all around the world are vigilant about the trends in these very kinds of events. We will be revisiting these issues constantly in the decades to come.

The second point is the human element to these disasters. We should be in awe of the destructive power of nature. We should mourn the dead and tend to the homeless. It was ever thus with humanity, constantly in the hands of the Gods.

Yet as leaders, we must think clearly about the actual trends at play.