Do this first
What to do right now
- Check the soft metals first: they tell the truth: gutters, downspouts, roof vents, furnace and dryer caps, air conditioner fins, mailbox, car hoods.
- Look for granule accumulation where the downspouts discharge; a sudden pile of dark sand after a hailstorm is a strong signal.
- Photograph any hailstones next to a coin or ruler for scale before they melt, and note the date and time.
- Look at window screens, deck boards and siding, hail rarely hits only the roof.
- Report the storm date to your insurer promptly, even if you are not yet sure of the extent.
- Have a roofer do the roof-level inspection; hail bruising is largely invisible from the ground.
What hail damage on asphalt shingles looks like
A hail hit on an asphalt shingle leaves a round bruise: the granules are knocked away and the fibreglass mat underneath is fractured, so the spot is soft when you press it, like a bruise on fruit. It does not usually leak immediately. What it does is expose the asphalt to ultraviolet light, which then dries and cracks it over the following seasons. That is why insurers treat functional hail damage as a covered loss even when there is no active leak: the useful life of the roof has been shortened.
Bruising versus everything that looks like bruising
Plenty of roof marks are not hail. Blistering from manufacturing or heat, mechanical damage from a previous installer's boots or a dropped tool, algae staining, and normal granule loss on an aged roof are all routinely misidentified, sometimes honestly, sometimes not. A credible inspection includes a chalked test square, photographs of the hits with a scale in frame, and a check of collateral damage on soft metals. If the soft metals show nothing at all, an adjuster is unlikely to accept roof bruising.
Hail in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is not the hail alley of the Plains states, but severe thunderstorms across the state produce damaging hail every year, most often between late spring and midsummer, and swaths can be narrow: your street hit hard while a neighbourhood two miles away sees nothing. Because our hail seasons are less intense than in the Midwest, damage here is more often the accumulated result of several moderate events than one dramatic one, which makes documentation of the specific date of loss even more important.
Practical protection for the homeowner
Get the inspection in writing with photographs. Do not sign a contingency agreement that ties you to a contractor before you know what the insurer will pay. Never accept an offer to cover, waive or rebate your deductible: that is fraud in Pennsylvania and the homeowner is exposed as well as the contractor. And verify the contractor's PA Home Improvement Contractor registration number before any money changes hands.
