Hail Damage Inspection & Repair

From the ground, look at soft metal first. Dents in gutters, downspouts, window wraps, vents, and the air conditioner's fins are the easiest hail indicator to see, and they tell you the stones were big enough to matter.

On the roof itself, hail damage on asphalt shingles shows as bruising: a circular area where granules have been knocked away and the mat underneath feels soft to the touch, like a bruise on fruit. It is genuinely hard to see, and even harder to see from the ground or from a photograph. That is why a proper inspection matters and why so many hail claims get under-scoped.

Not always. Scattered damage on one slope can sometimes be repaired. But hail rarely lands on one slope only, and once bruising is widespread the shingles across that elevation have all had their service life shortened at once — replacement becomes the honest recommendation rather than the profitable one.

The number of hits per test square is what determines this, and it is the same measure your adjuster uses. We document it the same way so the two assessments can be compared directly rather than argued about.

Sooner is better, and your policy sets the actual limit. Hail damage does not repair itself and the shingle keeps degrading, but attributing damage to a specific storm gets harder the longer you wait — particularly in Minnesota, where another hail event may follow before you file.

If hail has hit your area, get the inspection done now and keep the dated documentation, even if you decide not to file. Documentation with a date on it is worth a great deal later.

There is no single threshold, because it depends on the shingle, its age, and the wind driving the stones. As a rough guide, roughly one-inch hail is where functional damage to asphalt shingles becomes likely, and smaller stones can still bruise an older, more brittle roof that has already lost granules.

Wind direction matters as much as size. A storm driving hail hard from one direction will damage the elevations facing into it and leave the opposite slopes largely untouched — which is exactly why a scope built from one slope can be wrong for the house.

Functional damage means the hail has fractured the shingle mat and shortened the roof's service life — that is the bruising we look for, and it is what a claim is built on. Cosmetic damage means marks that look bad but have not compromised how the roof sheds water.

The distinction genuinely matters, because some Minnesota policies now carry cosmetic damage exclusions that pay for functional loss only. It is worth checking whether yours does before a storm rather than after.

Roofs get the attention, but hail hits everything on the elevation facing the storm. Dented gutters and downspouts, dimpled metal window wraps and fascia, cracked or chipped vinyl siding, and damaged air conditioner fins are all common and all claimable.

A claim scoped for roofing alone routinely misses several thousand dollars of siding and gutter damage on the same wall. We inspect and document the whole exterior envelope, because that is what the storm actually hit.