Homeowners insurance premiums are soaring in Minnesota, and consumers can expect more rate shocks ahead as insurance companies wager that a run of worse-than-usual weather will continue.

Increases that average 10 to 12 percent this year come on the heels of rate hikes averaging 7 percent last year and 8 percent in 2010, according to a Star Tribune analysis of company filings. That has added $200 to $300 a year to the average policy.

Insurers say they're grappling with a shift in the state's weather patterns, an eruption of tornadoes, straight-line winds and hailstorms that have lashed Minnesota since 1998. Minnesota ranked in the top three states for insured catastrophe losses in 2007 and 2008 alongside disaster magnets such as Texas, Louisiana and California.

"In all of my years in the business I have never seen increases like this," said Roberta Gibbons, an independent agent at St. Louis Park-based Dyste Williams. "But then again, I've never seen storm claims like we've had in Minnesota."

Skeptics aren't convinced that weather trends justify the size of the increases, particularly since many companies are also whittling away at how much they'll cover. It's debatable whether Minnesota's storm pattern has permanently shifted, the skeptics point out. And after all, insurance is about taking risks and bad years are part of the equation.

There is also less public scrutiny of the rates in Minnesota than in some other states. Unlike Texas and California, where homeowners insurance rate-making is nearly a contact sport, there are no consumer groups in Minnesota focused on it. The state Commerce Department has the power to call public hearings on large proposed increases, but last did so in 2002. Of the 25 largest hikes companies put through since 2010, Commerce reduced only one.

Amy Bach, a lawyer heading United Policyholders, an insurance consumer advocacy group in San Francisco, said rate shock is such a political issue in the Gulf Coast states it has given rise to candidates running for office just on an insurance reform platform. "You guys are waking up," she said.

"I can assure you that the rate increases people are experiencing are way higher than they should be," Bach said. "There are not sufficient safeguards. They have a captive audience."

Not just wind and rain

Insurers say bad weather is just one of several factors driving up rates. Rising material costs that make claims more expensive and lower returns on company investments due to ultra-low interest rates are also at work.

But losses from storms around the country have been at record levels since 2008, said Bob Hartwig, an economist with the Insurance Information Institute, a New York-based industry association.

Through August, companies raised premiums on various homeowners insurance products in Minnesota more than 90 times, according to the Star Tribune's review. They're on pace to outstrip 2011 when there were about 100 increases.

Increases this year range from less than 1 percent to 163 percent in one extreme case focused on optional water backup coverage, but they average 10 percent to 12 percent. The rate change a carrier reports to Commerce is itself an average; individual customers see smaller or larger increases.

For instance, Travelers Home & Marine Insurance Co. put through a rate hike averaging 25 percent in April. But David Braun, 56, of Edina, said his Travelers policy jumped 43 percent on top of previous increases. The managing principal for a national life insurance brokerage agency, Braun said he once worked for Travelers. He understands rate-making. Still, the homeowners hikes have him scratching his head.

"So you have three years of consecutive losses," Braun said. "So why does it go up 10 percent one year, 22 percent the next year and 41 percent the next year? That doesn't make any sense. I question why they didn't do a better job based on the information that they had ... that we would get slammed like we got slammed."

Travelers declined repeated requests to make someone available for an interview. In a brief statement, a spokesman said it adjusted rates mainly because of the weather over several years and the rising cost of construction materials.

Carriers are also restricting coverage -- covering the actual cash value for a roof as opposed to the new replacement cost, for instance, or raising deductibles for wind and hail. Local agents report an increase in policyholders being denied coverage or dropped due to losses. Some companies are ratcheting up the price to cover roofs more than 15 years old.

Some carriers might refuse to write a new policy at all for someone with weather-related losses in the last few years, and those old losses could haunt you at your next home.

The Auto Club Insurance Association not only hiked its premiums 20 percent but declared that as of July 1, to get a new policy a homeowner can't have any claims in the past five years.