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After the storm: wind, hail and what to do first

The hours after a storm are when the worst decisions get made, usually under pressure and usually to someone who arrived uninvited. Knowing what you are looking at is most of the defence.

Assess it before anyone knocks on the door

Storm damage is the one area of this subject where the biggest risk is not the weather. It is the sequence that follows: a roof that might be damaged, a homeowner who cannot assess it, and a steady stream of people offering to take the problem away. Knowing what you are looking at is the thing that puts you back in control, and most of it can be established from the ground.

Wind damage is usually visible. Shingles gone entirely, shingles lifted and laid back down at the wrong angle, a line of damage along a rake or a ridge where the wind got underneath. The less obvious version is a shingle that looks fine but whose seal strip has broken — it will lift in the next storm even though nothing appears wrong today, which is why a roof can seem to fail suddenly a month after the wind.

Hail is much harder, and this is worth being honest about. Serious hail damage to asphalt shingles is often a soft bruise in the mat rather than a hole, and it is genuinely difficult to identify without being on the roof and knowing what to press. The secondary evidence is far easier and it is all at eye level: dents in gutters, downspouts, vent caps, flashing, window screens, the grill, the car. If the soft metal around the house is dented, the roof took the same hits.

Then there is the damage that is not about the covering at all. A sagging line along a ridge or between rafters after heavy snow, a limb strike, an obvious deflection — that is a structural question, it is not a roofing question, and the person who answers it is a licensed structural engineer rather than a contractor. We say that plainly and we do not blur it.

What we do not do on these pages: we do not discuss insurance. Not coverage, not claims, not adjusters, not depreciation. In the US the intersection of storm damage and insurance is a well-populated industry with licensed professionals on one side and a great deal of pressure on the other, and a site that does not know your policy or your state has no business having an opinion about it. We stick to what the roof is doing.

Storm damage guides

Sources

What this page explains is based on these official sources. If you check one and it does not match what you read here, send it to us and the article gets corrected.