Back to back storms pummeled parts of central Nebraska over the weekend, and on Monday some farmers got a look at the damage left behind. Custer County was one of the hardest hit places, and crop damage was widespread.

Dick Seitz (Class of ’61) and his Cathedral High School buddies were at Mama’s Pizza on Saddle Creek Road on Thursday evening last week, telling stories of the old days, when they heard what sounded like firecrackers outside. The noise actually came from hailstones, some as big as 4 inches in diameter.

Nebraska’s governor has declared a state of emergency for storm-damaged areas of the state. Tuesday’s declaration by Gov. Pete Ricketts will let the state respond to local governments in the wake of storms that struck both ends of Nebraska last week.

Everything is big in Texas, including hailstorms. The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) said today that insurance claims for hail damage in Texas last year exceeded the previous two years combined.

At least two people were killed and dozens of others injured Tuesday after suspected tornadoes tore through a mobile home park in Wisconsin and a subdivision in Oklahoma. None of the tornado reports have yet been confirmed by the National Weather Service.

Leading travel insurance trends aren’t just focused on hurricanes and illness anymore. A considerable number of traveler inquiries are now seeking to make certain that they are protected against losses from terrorism, too.

On Friday, the meteorology community was riding a major high as stunningly high-definition images came in from the nation’s newest and much-anticipated earth observation satellite. The high came crashing down that evening, though, as the first hints of significant cuts to the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began to emerge.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times: You don’t want your vehicle to catch on fire. For that reason, Mercedes-Benz is recalling more than 354,000 vehicles.

An annual state-by-state analysis of auto insurance reveals rates continue to increase after filing just a single claim. According to a fourth annual study by insuranceQuotes, drivers now pay an average of 44 percent more for car insurance after making a single claim of $2,000 or more.

People sparked most US wildfires in recent decades, causing longer fire seasons and increasing the amount of scorched earth, according to a new study published Monday. Researchers found that humans caused 84 percent -- or four out of five -- of the total 1.5 million wildfires studied between 1992 and 2012.



In addition, human actions tripled the length of the fire season during those two decades and were responsible for 44 percent of the total acreage burned, researchers reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

United Technologies Corp’s (UTX.N) Carrier unit expanded a recall of some air conditioners and heat pumps as their power cord plugs can overheat, posing a fire risk, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday.

Your greatest SodaStream fears have been realized: tens of thousands of SodaStream’s plastic bottles may not be able to withstand quite as much pressure as the company thought, causing the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission to issue a recall because they pose an injury risk to carbonation-happy consumers.

It may not come as a surprise that bruises and open wounds are the most common injuries in every state across America — with the one exception of Colorado, where you’re more likely to have be injured by a ‘fall’. But did you know that ‘over-exertion’ is disproportionately common in North Dakota, and a ‘near-drowning’ experience six-times more likely in Hawaii?

Putting the injured worker first is key to the “advocacy-based claims model,” which puts the worker at the center of all activity. “It focuses on improving the injured worker’s experience. Until now, most employers have focused on corporate outcomes.

The U.S. property/casualty insurance industry in 2016 will likely post an underwriting loss for the first time in four years due to higher catastrophe losses, competitive market conditions and auto liability challenges, A.M. Best Co. Inc. said Monday.