How to tell if your roof has hail damage

What you can check without leaving the ground

Hail hits your whole property, not only the roof, and the softer surfaces record it far more legibly than shingle does. Walk the perimeter and look at:

• Gutters and downspouts. Dents in soft aluminium are the clearest single indicator that the stone was large enough to matter.
• The air conditioning condenser. The aluminium fins on the outdoor unit bruise easily and hold the impression for years.
• Window screens and garage doors. Screens tear or dimple; a metal garage door dents visibly.
• Painted wood trim and fascia. Chipped paint in scattered round marks rather than in a peeling line.
• The ground at the downspout. Coarse black grit collecting there is shingle granules, and they came off your roof.

If several of these are marked, the roof took the same storm. That is the inference an adjuster draws too.

What the damage looks like on the roof itself

Bruising. The characteristic hail signature and the one people miss. The stone crushes the fibreglass mat beneath the surface, leaving a dark spot that feels soft — like pressing a bruise on fruit. It frequently does not read as damage visually at all. Inspectors find it by touch.

Granule loss in a circular pattern. Scattered round spots of exposed black asphalt, randomly distributed. This is what separates it from age wear, which is even and gradual across the whole slope.

Cracks and splits. More common on older or brittle three-tab shingle, which is why older Garland neighbourhoods see more outright shingle failure than newer ones.

Damaged metal on the roof. Vents, valley metal, chimney flashing and ridge caps dent the same way your gutters do, and they are frequently the clearest evidence up there.

Our illustrated guide to the four damage types shows what each of these actually looks like.

Damage is directional, and it is patchy

Two things about hail confuse homeowners more than anything else.

First, it arrives at an angle. In North Texas storms most often track from the south or west, so those slopes take the impact and the north and east slopes can be untouched. If somebody inspected only the side facing the street, they inspected the wrong side.

Second, hail falls in narrow, uneven swaths. One street can be hit hard while the next is fine, and two houses on the same street can genuinely differ. 'My neighbour was fine' is not evidence about your roof, and neither is the reverse.

Do not get on the roof

Plainly: it is not worth it. Roof falls are a leading cause of serious home injury, wet or hail-glazed shingle is slick, and walking a damaged roof can worsen the damage and muddy the evidence. Steep pitches — common across West Plano and much of Frisco — are worse again.

If you want to look, use binoculars from the ground, or a phone camera on a pole. An inspection is free and takes about thirty minutes; there is no reason to take the risk yourself.

How long you have

Texas policies generally measure the filing window from the date of the storm rather than the date you noticed the damage, and the exact term varies by carrier. The practical consequence is that a spring hail event is very often still claimable months later — but the window is finite, and an undocumented roof gets harder to claim as later weather muddies the picture.

The cheapest move is to get it documented now, whether or not you intend to file. A dated photo report costs nothing and either supports a claim or proves the roof was sound.

Common questions