Does Travel Insurance Cover Bad Weather?

No one can truly predict the weather and travelers sometimes get caught in severe situations due to bad weather, which prompts the question: does travel insurance cover bad weather?

Here are some of the severe weather situations travelers have faced recently:

• Heavy snowfall across Europe closed roads and caused power outages
• Severe thunderstorms with high winds and large hail menaced the U.S. midwest
• Flash floods due to torrential rain wipe out homes and infrastructure across India
• Tornadoes rip across Oklahoma and Texas, closing airports and delaying flights for days

These are just a few of the weather-related situations that travelers have faced recently, of course.

Travel insurance covers the unexpected things that can occur on your trip, and thus it’s the ideal way to protect yourself and your pre-paid trip expenses in situations where bad weather causes you to:

• Cancel your trip because the roads are washed out or your resort is destroyed
• Interrupt (abandon) your trip due to mandatory evacuations or your primary residence has been damaged
• Seek medical treatment for an injury that resulted from severe weather
• Request an emergency security evacuation to get to safer ground
• Miss an important travel connection and have to catch up to your cruise or tour
• Wait out the weather in a hotel until the airlines can reschedule flights

It’s important to note that some travel insurance plans exclude coverage for hurricanes, so it’s important to buy a plan that includes coverage for hurricanes if you’re traveling during hurricane season.

See our full review of weather and natural disaster coverage for additional information. Note the conditions for weather-related claims sometimes calls for travel suppliers to stop all services for at least 24 hours.