How do I know if my roof has hail damage?
From the ground, you mostly cannot. Hail bruises the mat under the granules, and that reads as a soft dark circle from a few feet away and as nothing at all from the driveway. What you can check without a ladder is the soft metal: gutters, downspouts, vent caps and the air conditioner fins.
What hail actually does to a shingle
An asphalt shingle is a mat with granules on top. Hail knocks the granules off and bruises the mat underneath, and the bruise is what matters: it is the point where the shingle will fail early, sometimes years later. It feels soft under a thumb and it looks like a dark circle where the granules have gone.
That is why a roof can be genuinely damaged and look perfectly normal from the street, and why a roof can look battered and turn out to be fine. Neither of those judgements can be made from the ground.
The things you can check yourself
Gutters and downspouts for dents. Vent caps and turbine housings, which are thin metal and take clear impressions. The air conditioner fins, which are the most sensitive hail gauge most houses have. The bottom of the downspouts for a pile of granules after the rain, which means the roof shed more than it should have.
None of those prove the roof is damaged. All of them are reasons to have somebody walk it.
Timing, and why waiting costs you
Carriers set deadlines for storm claims and they vary. Beyond the paperwork, a bruised shingle that sits for two summers stops looking like storm damage and starts looking like wear, and wear is not covered.
It cuts the other way too. A roof that took a bad storm and has been quietly leaking since can turn a straightforward claim into an argument about maintenance.
Related questions
How big does hail have to be to damage a roof?
It depends on the shingle, its age and the wind behind the hail. One-inch hail damages plenty of older roofs and leaves some newer ones alone.
Does a hail-resistant shingle mean no claim?
No. Class 4 shingles resist impact better; they are not immune, and they are still worth inspecting.
My roof is ten years old. Is it worth checking?
Yes. A ten-year-old roof with hail bruising is the exact case where a claim is worth filing, because the damage will shorten a roof that otherwise had years left.
