First: stabilise the building
When a storm has opened a roof, the priority is stopping water entry, not planning the permanent repair. Emergency tarping is a temporary measure that buys the time to do the real work in dry, safe conditions — and it also matters for the claim, because most policies obligate the policyholder to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage. Water that keeps entering after you knew about the opening can be excluded.
Do not go onto a storm-damaged roof yourself. Wet roofing is slick, hail-struck surfaces shed granules and behave like ball bearings underfoot, and structural damage is not always visible from above. If there is any chance of contact between the roof and a power line, or if the roof structure appears to have moved, treat the building as unsafe and call the utility and the fire service before anyone approaches it.
What is worth doing from inside: move belongings out of the affected area, put containers under active drips, and photograph everything before you move it or clean anything up. Those photographs are evidence, and they are easier to take now than to reconstruct later.
Hail damage is not what most people picture
Homeowners commonly assume hail damage means holes. On asphalt shingles it rarely does. What hail produces is bruising: a circular impact mark where the granule surface has been knocked away and the fibreglass mat underneath has fractured. Press it and it feels soft, like a bruise on fruit. The shingle is not leaking, and it may not leak for several years — but the mat is broken, the exposed asphalt now oxidises directly under UV, and the remaining service life has been cut substantially.
This is why hail claims are so often filed late and denied. The damage is invisible from the ground, produces no immediate symptom, and only announces itself years afterwards, long past the reporting window. Identifying it requires someone on the roof marking out test squares and counting impacts per square within them, which is also the method the adjuster will use.
| Surface | How hail damage presents |
|---|---|
| Asphalt shingles | Circular bruises with granule loss and a soft feel; a fractured mat visible when the tab is lifted. Random distribution, no directional pattern. |
| Soft metals — gutters, downspouts, vents, valley metal, drip edge | Dents. These are the best corroborating evidence available, because they date the event and confirm stone size, and they are visible without walking the roof. |
| Wood shake | Splits with sharp, unweathered edges, often with an impact mark at the split. Fresh splits are orange-brown; old splits are grey. |
| Tile | Cracks and chipped edges. The larger risk is damage to the underlayment beneath, which is what actually keeps water out. |
| Low-slope membrane | Punctures and fractures, especially over insulation boards; on modified bitumen, circular bruising similar to asphalt. |
| Air conditioning fins, screens, painted surfaces | Not roofing, but strong evidence. Adjusters look at these to confirm an event occurred and to size the stones. |
Wind damage
Wind works differently. It rarely tears shingles off at random — it finds a starting point, usually at a rake edge, a ridge, or a shingle whose sealant strip never fully bonded, and then peels progressively from there. So wind damage tends to be directional and clustered rather than scattered, concentrated on the windward slopes and at edges and corners where uplift pressures are highest.
The damage that matters most is often the damage you cannot see: shingles that were lifted enough to break the sealant bond and then laid back down flat. They look intact from the ground. They are no longer sealed, and the next storm takes them. Checking for this means lifting tabs by hand across the affected slopes.
How the claim process actually works
| Step | What happens | What matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Document immediately | Photograph interior and exterior damage before anything is moved, cleaned or covered. Note the date and time of the storm. | Dated evidence is the foundation of the claim. Everything after this rests on it. |
| 2. Mitigate | Emergency tarping to stop further water entry. Keep every receipt. | Policies require reasonable mitigation, and mitigation costs are generally reimbursable. |
| 3. Independent inspection | A roofer documents the damage in detail — test squares, impact counts, soft-metal corroboration, photographs of each finding. | Having your own documentation before the adjuster arrives changes the conversation from opinion to evidence. |
| 4. File the claim | Report to the insurer within the policy's stated window. | Late reporting is one of the most common grounds for denial, and it is entirely avoidable. |
| 5. Adjuster inspection | The insurer's adjuster inspects, usually with the contractor present. | Being on the roof together means disagreements get resolved at the shingle rather than by letter three weeks later. |
| 6. Scope and settlement | The adjuster issues a scope of loss and an estimate. Genuine omissions get supplemented with documentation. | Adjusters miss things — ventilation components, drip edge, code-required upgrades. Supplements are a normal part of the process, not a fight. |
| 7. Work and final payment | Repair or replacement is completed and documented; the recoverable depreciation is released. | On a replacement-cost policy the second payment is contingent on proving the work was actually done. |
If a roofer offers to waive, absorb or “take care of” your deductible, walk away. It is insurance fraud in most states, it exposes you personally and not only the contractor, and it tells you exactly how that company handles everything else. The same applies to anyone who wants a signature in your driveway before the insurer has been notified.
Where we stand in that process
We document damage thoroughly, we meet the adjuster on the roof, and we supplement the scope with evidence where something has genuinely been missed. We do not negotiate settlements on your behalf — that is public adjusting, it is a licensed activity in most states, and a roofer offering it is either unlicensed or describing something else.
We also tell people when there is no claim. Not every roof under a storm track is damaged. Granule loss in gutters is normal shedding on an ageing roof, not automatic evidence of hail. Filing a claim that gets denied still appears in your claims history. If we do not find event damage, we will say so, and if the roof needs work for reasons unrelated to the storm we will quote that as ordinary roof repair instead.
Repair or replacement after a storm
Storm damage points toward replacement more often than ordinary wear does, for a reason that is about matching rather than severity. Once a slope has scattered impact damage across it, patching individual shingles leaves the surrounding compromised units in place, and weathered material cannot be colour-matched. Many policies address this directly through matching provisions, though the terms vary considerably between states and carriers.
Genuine repairs after a storm are usually the localised cases: a limb strike on one section, a few courses peeled at a rake edge, damaged flashing on a single penetration. Those we repair.
Emergency response is arranged as fast as conditions allow, which after a widespread event means triage by severity — open roofs before damaged ones. Sunny San Luis Roofing will give you a realistic arrival window rather than an optimistic one.