The US suffered multibillion-dollar losses from almost 250 tornado touchdowns last month, the most for any April since 2011, according to Impact Forecasting.

Two major tornado outbreaks were recorded, the Aon-owned modeller’s latest monthly catastrophe recap says

The first hit from April 13-15, killing at least nine people and causing estimated economic losses of $US925 million ($1.34 billion), with insurers covering about $US700 million ($1.01 billion). There were 70 tornado touchdowns, baseball-sized hail and gusts up to 160kph across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.

The second outbreak from April 17-19 killed at least four people. At least 96 tornadoes affected a dozen states and economic losses were predicted to be in the hundreds of millions, mostly insured.

Elsewhere, flooding in Canada left up to 10,000 homes inundated, with losses expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars. Due to relatively low overland flood insurance take-up, a sizeable portion is expected to be uninsured.

Impact meteorologist Steve Bowen says the uninsured costs have “once again exposed the… protection gap within mature insurance markets for a specific peril”.

Other natural catastrophes last month included torrential rainfall in Rio de Janeiro, flooding and mudslides in South Africa, flash flooding in Pakistan, and thunderstorms across Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India.