Guides
Extreme heat, drought and your home: what insurance covers
Heat and drought are not covered perils, but they feed wildfire, outages and foundation movement. What a standard policy pays, excludes and how to prepare.
A standard homeowners policy has no heat or drought coverage as such. It pays when heat feeds a peril it does cover, chiefly fire, and it excludes most of the other ways a hot, dry year hurts a house: a power failure on the utility's side, a worn-out air conditioner, soil shrinking under the foundation, dead landscaping and the slow aging of a roof. Knowing which is which before the next heat wave tells you where to spend on an endorsement and where to spend on prevention.
What this year looked like
The National Centers for Environmental Information reported that summer 2026 was the warmest on record for the contiguous United States in a 132-year record: June through August averaged 74.4°F, 3.0°F above the 20th-century average, and August set its own record at 75.6°F. Arizona (tied), New Mexico, Utah and Colorado each had their warmest summer on record. Drought covered 59.1% of the contiguous U.S. on September 1, up more than 10 percentage points from early August.
The insurance connection runs mainly through fire. Triple-I's July 29, 2026 wildfire brief reported that 42% of Western U.S. land affected by wildland fires between 2001 and 2024 burned during or immediately after a heat wave, and that more than 35,000 fires burned over 3 million acres nationwide in the first half of 2026, above the 10-year averages. It also said Florida, Georgia and Nebraska had record wildfire activity. Aon put 2025 U.S. insured losses from wildfire, drought and heatwave together at $43.0 billion, per Triple-I's compilation; its separate figures for the Palisades ($23.0 billion) and Eaton ($17.5 billion) fires add up to $40.5 billion, so by our arithmetic most of that category was two fires, not heat as such.
That is the pattern to keep in mind. The insured peril is fire. Heat and drought are the conditions that raise its odds.
How a standard policy treats a hot, dry year
This follows the ISO HO-3 (form HO 00 03 05 11). Your insurer's own form and your state's amendatory endorsement control.
| What happens | Standard HO-3 treatment | What may change it |
|---|---|---|
| Wildfire burns or smokes the house | Covered; additional living expenses if uninhabitable | Insurer availability and deductibles, not the peril |
| Utility power fails off your premises | Power failure exclusion; spoiled food not paid | Food spoilage or equipment breakdown endorsement |
| Air conditioner or refrigerator burns out | Mechanical breakdown and wear and tear excluded | Equipment breakdown endorsement; home warranty |
| Surge when power returns | Narrow coverage; electronic components excluded | See lightning and power surge damage |
| Clay soil dries and the foundation cracks | Excluded (settling, expansion, earth movement) | Some foundation endorsements, mostly tied to plumbing leaks |
| Lawn, shrubs and trees die in drought | Not paid; covered only for seven named perils | None common |
| Dead tree falls in a wind event and hits the house | House damage generally covered; removal limited | Insurer's form wording |
| Sun and heat age the roof, then hail or wind strikes | Storm damage covered; aging is wear and tear | Roof age schedules and ACV roof endorsements |
Fire: the covered path, and the pressure point
Fire and smoke damage to the dwelling and belongings are covered, and if the house is unlivable, loss of use pays for temporary housing. The trouble is upstream. Wildfire exposure drives the scoring, rate tiers and nonrenewals described in wildfire risk scores and how insurers use them, and dry years increase the pressure. If your home is near wildland, the practical steps are mitigation that insurers and states recognize: defensible space and wildfire insurance and home hardening for wildfire and insurance discounts. Smoke from a distant fire is a separate claim question; see wildfire smoke damage claims.
Power outages and the cooling load
A heat wave stresses the grid and the equipment inside your house. The HO-3 excludes loss from "Power Failure" when the failure takes place off the residence premises, with an exception: if the failure results in a loss from a peril the policy insures on the premises, the insurer pays for that loss. A utility cutting power, whether from overload or as a fire-safety shutoff, does not by itself trigger coverage. food spoilage and power outage coverage explains the endorsements that fill the gap, and Appliance and HVAC breakdown: insurance or warranty? covers the equipment side.
Say the grid fails for 36 hours and the contents of your freezer, worth $600, thaw. Under a standard policy you collect nothing. With a food spoilage endorsement limited to $500, you collect $500. A hotel stay for the heat is a separate matter. Living-expense coverage generally applies when a covered loss makes the home uninhabitable, and an off-premises outage is excluded, though the Connecticut Insurance Department puts it plainly: coverage "varies by policy and may not cover all heat-related losses". Ask your agent what your own form says before you need it.
Drought under the house
Clay soils swell when wet and shrink as they dry, and dry spells can pull support from beneath a slab or footing. The Colorado Geological Survey notes that arid and semi-arid areas see a much higher frequency of expansion problems because of seasonal swings in soil moisture, and it points to managing surface and underground water and avoiding ponded water or irrigation right at the foundation (Colorado Geological Survey). Your policy reads the damage differently. The HO-3 excludes loss from settling, shrinking, bulging or expansion, including resulting cracking, and the earth movement exclusion removes other soil movement. See foundation cracks and settling: what's covered.
The dispute is real, and each side has an argument. Insurers say slow soil movement is a property and maintenance condition that happens to nearly every house on those soils, which makes it close to a certainty and poorly suited to insurance. Homeowners answer that a drought is not something they caused and that a cracked slab is a large loss. The line blurs at a plumbing leak. If a pipe fails first and the escaping water undermines the soil, the water damage is generally covered and the foundation question is contested; if soil movement breaks the pipe, the earth movement exclusion and its anti-concurrent causation wording can give the insurer a stronger argument. The result depends on the form, any endorsement and how your state's courts read the exclusions (slab leaks and tear-out coverage).
Landscaping is the cheaper surprise. The HO-3 covers trees, shrubs, plants and lawns only for fire or lightning, explosion, riot, aircraft, vehicles not owned by a resident, vandalism and theft, so a yard that dies in a dry summer is yours to replace (are trees, shrubs and landscaping covered?).
What heat does to a roof
Sustained heat and sunlight are among the things that age asphalt shingles, and roof age is a rating and eligibility factor at many insurers. The policy does not pay for aging. It does pay for hail or wind damage, but the amount may depend on how old the roof is, through a depreciated payment or an actual cash value roof endorsement. In practice, a roof worn by years of heat is a weaker roof when the storm comes and also a lower payout. roof age limits: when insurers won't cover an old roof covers the age rules.
Before the next heat wave
- Find what your policy lists. On the declarations page and endorsements, look for food spoilage, equipment breakdown, service line coverage and any roof payment schedule (your declarations page explained, line by line).
- Photograph and list. Date-stamped photos of the roof, foundation cracks, appliances and the contents of freezers help any claim and, for foundation cracks, give you a baseline of what already existed. Use the home inventory builder.
- Fix the drainage. Keep water moving away from the foundation, and ask a geotechnical or structural engineer, not only a repair contractor, about watering practices if you have clay soil.
- Clear and harden if you are near wildland. Remove dry vegetation, check vents and eaves, and ask your insurer which actions earn credits.
- Plan for an outage. A cooler and ice, a note of your freezer's contents and the time the power failed, and receipts for emergency purchases. The Connecticut department recommends keeping receipts for emergency purchases and temporary expenses.
- Report promptly after a covered loss. For a fire or storm, report it right away. For a claim that is unlikely to be covered, ask the adjuster for the provision in writing.
The homeowners coverage gap checker shows which of these gaps apply to your home.
Key takeaways
- A standard homeowners policy covers fire, not heat or drought; the insured loss arrives when hot, dry conditions feed a wildfire or a storm.
- Off-premises power failure, appliance burnout, soil shrinkage under a foundation, drought-killed landscaping and roof aging are excluded or limited in the ISO HO-3, though endorsements fill some gaps.
- Summer 2026 was the warmest on record in the contiguous U.S. and drought covered 59.1% of it on September 1, according to NOAA's NCEI, which raises the odds of the conditions that lead to fire.
- Heat shows up in your premium indirectly, through wildfire scoring, roof-age rules and storm deductibles, not as its own line item.
- Check your declarations page for spoilage and equipment endorsements, document your home's condition now, and treat drainage, defensible space and roof condition as insurance work.