Alright, so a bad one just rolled through, maybe hail, maybe just a lot of wind, and now you’re standing in your yard looking up trying to figure out if you’ve got a real problem or if the roof’s fine. Here’s the stuff that actually matters, in the order we’d tell you to think about it.
First, don’t get up there yourself. I know it’s tempting, especially if it’s still storming out or the ground’s wet, but a wet roof after a storm is exactly how people end up getting hurt, and honestly you probably can’t tell what you’re looking at from up close anyway. Wind and hail damage is sneaky — it doesn’t always look dramatic.
What you can check safely from the ground: look at your gutters. If there’s a bunch of little dark granules sitting in there, almost like coarse sand, that’s shingle granules that got knocked loose by the hail, and it’s one of the most reliable early signs something happened up there even if the roof looks basically normal otherwise. Also walk around the outside of the house and look for dents on things like your gutters, downspouts, or any metal vents — if the hail was big enough to dent metal, it was big enough to do something to your shingles too, even if you can’t see it from down there.
Here’s the part people get wrong the most: they wait.
Either they don’t see obvious damage so they assume it’s fine, or they see some damage but figure they’ll deal with it “when they get a chance.” Both of those get expensive. Wind damage especially — a lot of the time the wind doesn’t rip a shingle off, it just breaks the seal underneath without you being able to tell just by looking. That shingle’s basically a ticking clock now, and the next rain that comes through is what actually gets you, not the storm itself.
On the insurance side, since this comes up constantly
Insurance companies want documentation, not just “yeah my roof got hit.” They want photos, ideally from someone who knows what storm damage actually looks like versus normal wear and tear, because adjusters see a lot of claims and they’re not just going to take your word for it. This is honestly the biggest reason to get a professional inspection instead of just eyeballing it yourself — we know what to photograph and how to write it up in a way that actually holds up when you file.
We do this a lot, so we’re not coming in cold — we check the shingle seals, flashing around chimneys and vents, valleys where two roof slopes meet, gutters, and the attic from the inside if we can get up there. If there’s real damage, we document all of it properly before you ever talk to your insurance company.
The inspection’s free, and there’s genuinely no downside to getting it done soon.
Either we find nothing and you’ve got peace of mind, or we find something and you’ve got documentation while it’s still fresh, which matters a lot more than people realize once you’re actually dealing with a claim three weeks later.