What Should You Check on Your Roof After a Storm?
After a storm passes, the useful thing to do is a short, methodical walk round rather than a worried stare at the roof. Most of what matters can be seen from the ground in fifteen minutes, and most of it is easier to see in the first day or two than a month later.
This is the routine check. If you already suspect real damage and are thinking about a claim, the question of how to tell whether a storm damaged your roof goes further into what wind and hail actually leave behind.
Start on the ground, and stay there
Walk the full perimeter of the house before you look up at anything. The ground tells you what came off the roof, and it does so at eye level.
Look for pieces of shingle, torn felt, fragments of ridge cap, bent metal, and any plastic or rubber that might have come from a vent. Note where you find them, because material collects on the side the wind was pushing, which points you at the slope worth examining.
Check the base of every downspout for a heavy deposit of granules. A handful after a violent storm is not alarming on an older roof. A pile of them is worth photographing.
Look at the soft metal
This is the most useful check most people skip. Hail hard enough to matter leaves marks on anything soft before it leaves marks you can see on shingles.
Look at gutters and downspouts, vent caps and flashing, the fins on an air conditioning condenser, letterboxes, and any painted metal on the property. Dents there tell you the hail was large enough to be worth taking seriously. Clean metal after a hail storm is reassuring in a way that squinting at shingles is not.
Then the roof itself, with binoculars
Work slope by slope rather than scanning the whole roof at once.
- Missing shingles, which show as a lighter rectangle of underlayment or decking.
- Shingles sitting out of line with their neighbours, or lifted at a corner.
- A horizontal crease across a shingle, which means wind lifted it and dropped it back. It has failed even though it is still there.
- Ridge and hip caps, which take the most wind and come off first.
- Flashing at chimneys, walls and valleys, looking for anything lifted or rippled.
- Vent pipe collars, which perish and split with age and tear in wind.
- A satellite dish or aerial that has moved, because its fixings go through the roof.
Gutters, fascia and the roof edge
Heavy rain and wind put load on the gutter line. Look for sections sagging away from the fascia, brackets pulled loose, joints separated, or a length of gutter now sitting at a visibly different angle.
Debris matters here too. A gutter packed with leaves and twigs from the storm will not drain the next one, and standing water at the eave is how storm damage becomes rot.
Go inside and look up
The interior tells you whether the covering has actually been breached, and it is the fastest part of the whole check.
Look at upstairs ceilings and the tops of exterior walls for staining that was not there before. Then take a torch into the roof space on a dry day and look for daylight through the deck, damp patches, or a dark track running down a rafter.
Be careful about what you conclude from a stain alone. Water travels, so finding the actual source takes more than finding the wet patch, and a stain that appears in cold weather with no rain is often condensation rather than storm damage.
Do not climb up to check
A roof after a storm is the worst possible time to walk on one. Surfaces are wet, debris is loose, and there may be structural damage you cannot see from above. Add a downed power line anywhere near the house and the situation is genuinely dangerous. Everything in this article is visible from the ground, from a window, or from inside the roof space. If something needs a closer look than that, it needs somebody with equipment and insurance.
Photograph it now, not later
Whether or not you end up claiming, the first day is when the evidence is cleanest.
Take wide shots that establish the whole house, then closer shots of anything specific. Photograph the debris on the ground before you tidy it. Photograph dented metal. Note the date of the storm and keep any local weather warning. If water is coming in, photograph the interior as it develops rather than once.
Make reasonable temporary repairs to stop further damage and keep the receipts, because most policies expect you to limit the loss. Do not throw away damaged material until somebody has seen it.
When it is worth calling somebody
Call promptly if shingles are missing rather than merely lifted, if flashing has moved, if water is entering, if a large branch or anything heavy landed on the roof, or if you can see daylight in the roof space.
Take your time choosing who. Storms bring people to the door, and the ones who arrive uninvited are worth more scrutiny than the ones you sought out. The usual warning signs apply, and nothing about a storm claim requires you to sign anything the same day.
Conclusion
Walk the ground, look at the soft metal, work slope by slope with binoculars, then check inside. Fifteen minutes, no ladder, and photographs of everything on the day.
Most storms leave nothing that needs acting on. The value of the routine is that when something has happened, you find it while it is still a repair, and you find it with the evidence still on the ground. Fold it into your normal seasonal checks and it stops feeling like an event.
