Zurich-based catastrophe insurance data organisation PERILS has placed initial windstorm losses from extratropical storm Goretti at €467 million, as claims volumes in southwestern England surged to three times normal levels following the January event.
The Zurich-based catastrophe insurance data organisation’s estimate, based on loss data collected from affected insurers, covers property and motor lines across the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium.
PERILS noted that while windstorm losses of this size are observed annually from a Europe-wide perspective, Goretti is the largest European windstorm event loss recorded so far in the 2025/26 season.
Named Goretti by Météo France and Elli by the Free University of Berlin, the storm was marked by explosive cyclogenesis and a sting jet - an atmospheric phenomenon that generated record-breaking gusts along a narrow corridor from Cornwall through the Channel Islands and into northwestern France.
A record gust of 213 km/h was recorded at the Gatteville lighthouse on the Cotentin Peninsula.
Luzi Hitz, product manager at PERILS, said the storm was the first European windstorm event of the 2025/26 season to exceed the organisation's capturing threshold of €300 million for any one country or €500 million for a Europe-wide event.
France bore the brunt of the damage. "This is why the vast majority of the Goretti losses - close to 75% - occurred in France," Hitz said, adding that a more northerly storm track would have resulted in greater UK losses. Belgium was only marginally impacted.
The storm sits well below the major European benchmark events. The Dudley-Eunice-Franklin windstorm series in February 2022 produced insured losses of €3.85 billion and triggered close to 1.9 million individual claims, PERILS data showed.
A Moody's RMS analysis ranked Eunice as the most damaging European windstorm since Kyrill in 2007, which caused an estimated €7.6 billion in insured losses at today's values.
A closer comparator is windstorm Ciaran in November 2023, which PERILS estimated at a final insured loss of €2.067 billion. Like Goretti, Ciaran featured a sting jet that produced intense, localised damage. PERILS noted at the time that windstorm losses of that size could be expected roughly once every four years from a European perspective.
The Met Office drew a more direct comparison, stating that Goretti's wind speeds could be stronger than those seen during both Ciaran and Eunice. At St Mary's Airport on the Isles of Scilly, the storm produced the highest recorded gust in 47 years.
Beyond the property and motor lines captured in the PERILS estimate, the storm's passage through Cornwall triggered a significant claims response in rural areas. Crawford & Company reported claims concentrations were highest in the Plymouth and Truro postcode areas, with around 10,000 homes losing power and water.
Andrew Shaw, head of agriculture at Crawford, described the aftermath as "an extremely challenging and distressing time for rural communities."
The firm flagged a secondary wave of claims from agricultural policyholders with livestock exposures, as prolonged power outages disrupted milking operations, ventilation systems, and water supply during the winter lambing season.
The Met Office's post-event analysis recorded almost 100 trees felled at St Michael's Mount near Penzance, while a quarter of the large mature trees at Trewithen House and Gardens were brought down. Cornwall MP Andrew George described the situation as a crisis, with thousands of homes left without power and water for days.
No Cornwall-specific agricultural loss figure has yet been published. The PERILS estimate does not include agricultural losses as a standalone category.
