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Hail damage is mostly invisible from the ground, and it does not stop being damage because you cannot see it. Getting it found and documented is what decides whether it gets paid for.
What a storm does
Homeowners tend to look for missing shingles after a storm, because that is the damage that is visible from the lawn. Missing shingles are the least ambiguous kind and often not the most expensive. The two forces do quite different things, and both matter.
Wind does not usually rip a shingle off. It lifts the tab, breaks the seal strip that bonded it to the course below, folds it back, and lets it drop into place looking untouched. That fold is a crease, and the fibreglass mat inside the shingle is broken along it. From the ground the roof looks fine. From four feet away the crease is obvious, and the shingle will pass water for the rest of its life. Wind also works the edges first — rakes, eaves, ridge caps and the corners where pressure is highest.
Hail bruises. A stone strikes the shingle, fractures the mat underneath, and knocks the protective granules loose. What is left is a soft, dark spot that you can often feel with a thumb before you can see it — and once the granules are gone, the asphalt beneath is exposed to ultraviolet light and begins to fail years early. That is why hail damage is a real loss even when the roof is not leaking yet: the storm did not open your roof, it shortened it.
The reliable places to read a hail event are the soft metals, because they dent and hold the dent: vent caps, gutters and downspouts, flashing, roof vents, air conditioner condenser fins, mailboxes. Adjusters look there too, and for good reason — a bruise on a shingle is a judgement call, while a dented vent cap is a data point.
Insurance policies carry deadlines for reporting a loss, and the further you get from a dated storm the harder it becomes to attribute damage to it rather than to age. A roof inspected shortly after a named event, with the date of that event on record, is a much more straightforward claim than the same roof inspected two years later. If a storm has come through, having it looked at costs you nothing and preserves the option.
After the storm
In order. The first three are worth doing before you call anybody, including us.
How it runs
01
We go up and document what the storm did: creased shingles, bruising, soft metals, siding and gutters. Photographs, in a file, dated.
02
If the roof is letting water in and can be safely accessed, we dry it in before anything else happens.
03
Findings written up in a form an adjuster can work from — and we will meet them at the property.
04
Repair or full replacement, depending on what the storm actually did rather than on what is easiest to sell.
Straight answers
Nothing here is hidden behind a dropdown. If a question you have isn't answered, call and ask.
You largely cannot, from the ground, and that is the whole problem with hail. Bruising is a soft spot in the mat with the granules knocked off it — often easier to feel than to see, and invisible at any distance. The tell-tale signs you can check yourself are the soft metals: dented gutters and downspouts, dinged vent caps, marked flashing, and bent condenser fins on the air conditioner. If those are dented, the roof took the same hits.
Get it inspected first, then call. A claim is much simpler when you can report a documented loss rather than ask whether you might have one, and an inspection costs you nothing. What we will not do is tell you to file a claim on a roof that is simply old — wear is not a covered event, and a denied claim on record helps nobody.
Policies vary and they do carry deadlines, so read yours or ask your agent for the number rather than take it from a contractor. The practical point is separate from the legal one: the longer you wait, the harder it is to attribute damage to a particular dated storm instead of to age, and that is where claims quietly fall apart.
That is a question for your agent, not for us, and any roofer who answers it confidently is guessing about your policy and your carrier. What we can tell you is what the storm actually did to your roof, so the decision you make is an informed one.
Not necessarily. Adjusters work fast, in volume, after a regional event, and hail bruising is the easiest damage in the business to walk past. If our documentation shows damage that was not recorded, that is a conversation worth having with your carrier, and we will provide what we found. We cannot promise an outcome — nobody honest can — and if a second look says the roof genuinely is not damaged, we will tell you that too.
Where the roof can be safely reached, yes. A tarp keeps water out of your house until the weather clears enough to do real work. We will not send anyone onto a roof in an active storm or onto a structure that is not safe to stand on, and no honest contractor will.
No. You choose who works on your house. A carrier can recommend, and their preferred programmes are convenient, but the choice is yours.
The rest of the exterior
Tell us where the house is and what you're seeing. We'll document what it did while the storm is still recent.
Rather talk it through? (252) 544-6845
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