How to spot hail damage before your claim deadline runs out

Every spring we get the same call in July: a homeowner noticed a stain on the ceiling, remembered the storm back in April, and wants to know whether it is too late. Sometimes it is. Most Tennessee policies give you twelve months from the date of loss to file, and a few have tightened that to six.

What hail actually does to a shingle

Hail rarely punches a hole. What it does is bruise — the impact fractures the asphalt mat under the granules and knocks the granules loose, and from that point the exposed mat starts breaking down under UV. The shingle keeps shedding water for a year or two, and then it does not.

That is why the damage is so easy to miss. From the ground a hail-struck roof looks exactly like a healthy one. The bruise only reads as a soft dark circle when you are standing over it, and the granule loss shows up as a slight thinning that you would never notice without something to compare it to.

The signs you can check yourself

You do not need to get on the roof, and please do not. Check the soft metal first: gutters, downspouts, the caps on vents, and any aluminium flashing. Hail dents soft metal before it does visible damage to shingles, so dimples on a downspout are the single best ground-level indicator there is.

Then look at the base of your downspouts. A handful of granules after a storm is normal. A cone of them like coarse sand is not. Finally, check window screens and the top of your air-conditioning condenser — both dent easily and both tell you the size of what came down.

When to call somebody

If the soft metal is dimpled, get a proper inspection while the claim window is open. A real inspection means someone on the roof chalking strikes per square and photographing them, not a walk around the perimeter with a clipboard.

Be careful about who knocks. After a bad storm Middle Tennessee fills up with out-of-state crews working door to door, and they leave the same way they came. Ask for the Tennessee licence number, ask where the office is, and ask who answers the phone in two years when a shingle lifts.