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About Crop Insurance

Hurricane Insurance Protection - Wind Index (HIP-WI)

Aerial view of hurricane headed for land

Hurricane Insurance Protection – Wind Index (HIP-WI) covers a portion of the deductible of the underlying crop insurance policy when a county, or county adjacent, is within the area of sustained hurricane-force winds. The coverage provided by HIP-WI can be combined with the Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) and the Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX) when acreage is also insured by a companion policy. The Tropical Storm Option (TS) is an option to the HIP-WI endorsement that provides coverage for tropical storm weather events as defined by the Hurricane Data Provisions (HDP).

HIP-WI provides coverage for 70 different crops and is available in counties in these states: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia and Virginia. HIP-WI coverage must be purchased by the sales closing date (SCD) of a producer’s underlying policy. Sales closing dates vary by crop. Therefore, producers should check with a crop insurance agent to verify the SCD for a crop and county.

An administrative fee and premium for the crop covered by each HIP-WI Endorsement will be due in addition to any administrative fee and/or premium for the underlying policy. However, the HIP-WI administrative fee may be waived if the producer qualifies as a limited resource farmer, a Beginning Farmer Rancher (BFR) or a Veteran Farmer Rancher (VFR).

Sustained hurricane winds are the only cause of loss for HIP-WI and will be determined from NOAA hurricane wind extents data (refer to the Hurricane Data Provisions documents). If TS is elected, the county loss trigger will be amended to include coverage for a tropical storm weather event. This weather event must have sustained surface wind speeds of 34 knots (39 mph) and at least 6 inches of total precipitation received over four consecutive days (one day preceding the arrival of the tropical storm, the day of the tropical storm, and two days following the arrival of the tropical storm), according to NOAA IBTrACS and NOAA CPC data and as determined by RMA in accordance with the HDP and identified on the actuarial documents. Additional information on NOAA CPC’s interpolation and quality control process can be found in NOAA CPC’s Conceptual Description Paper.

NEWS: USDA’s New Crop Insurance for Tropical Storms – Created Because of Farmer Input – Protects Producers Impacted by Idalia

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2025 Sales Closing Dates

Upcoming sales closing dates are January 31, February 28, March 15, April 15, May 1, and May 15.

Crop insurance is sold and delivered solely through private crop insurance agents. A list of crop insurance agents is available at all USDA Service Centers and online at the RMA Agent Locator.

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Hurricane Documents

Sample code can be run to show an example of the cyclone corridor intersections and rainfall triggers for the HIP-WI TS Option program by downloading the following R package, distributed as a zip file. To install, download the zip file and install via devtools::install_local("HIPWITSO-Triggers.zip"). The vignette within the package provides an example of determining the HIP-WI and TS Option program triggers. To run, unzip the archive and set R’s current working directory to the location of the unzipped archive. The vignette is in vignetteshipwitso-triggers.Rmd.

Lists the dates/named storms for each state and county; this file is added as a courtesy and should not be considered an Actuarial record