Hail Damage Checklist: What to Photograph Before You Call Insurance

The hour after a hail storm is the cheapest documentation you will ever collect. Granules are still in the downspout splash, dents are still bright metal, and the storm date is still fresh in everyone’s memory. A week later the granules wash into the yard and the dents dull over. None of this requires a ladder, and none of it requires you to know what you are looking at. You are building a record, and somebody else reads it.

Why does the paperwork matter this much?

Your carrier decides a hail claim from a scope of damage, and that scope is assembled from what an adjuster sees on one visit. Hail in the Tulsa metro is patchy. National Weather Service climatology for Tulsa notes that hail often hits one part of the city and misses another entirely, so an adjuster cannot assume your street got what the airport recorded. Your photos are the evidence that it did.

The checklist

Work through it in this order. Date stamps matter, so use your phone camera and leave the location setting on if you are comfortable with it.

1. Ground level hail, immediately. Put a coin, a ruler or a tape measure next to stones on the drive or the patio table and shoot two or three. Quarter size is roughly one inch. Golf ball is 1.75 inches. This is the single shot people forget.
2. A timestamp anchor. One photo of your phone’s weather screen, a local news alert or the hail on the ground next to the front door with the house number visible.
3. Gutters and downspouts, all four sides. Shoot the top edge of the gutter along its length, then the face. Hail dents read best in raking light, so mid morning or late afternoon beats noon.
4. Downspout splash blocks and the ground under them. A pile of shingle granules there means the roof surface is shedding.
5. Roof vents, turbines and pipe caps. Use the zoom from the ground. Soft aluminum takes marks that shingles hide.
6. The AC condenser fins. Shoot the top and every side panel. Adjusters treat dented condenser fins as strong evidence of hail size and direction.
7. Window wraps, garage door panels, mailbox, grill lid, patio furniture. These are soft targets at the same height as the roof edge.
8. Fence, deck and siding, especially on the north and west faces. Oklahoma hail usually drives from the south or west, so damage is often heaviest on those slopes.
9. Wide shots of each elevation of the house. Stand back far enough that the whole side fits. These establish context for the close ups.
10. Any interior stain, drip or damp drywall. Photograph the ceiling, then the same spot again the following day so a growing ring is visible.
11. Attic decking, if you can get in safely. Daylight through the deck or wet insulation is worth a photo from the hatch. Do not walk the joists if you are unsure.
12. Your documents. The policy declarations page, the roof’s age if you know it, and any receipt from a previous roof or repair.

What should you avoid doing?

Do not	Why
Climb onto the roof	Wet shingles, hidden soft decking and a fall are worse than any claim outcome
Scrub or sweep a slope	Rubbing shingles knocks granules loose and muddies the evidence
Throw away damaged parts	Keep the bent gutter section, the cracked vent cap, the broken screen
Sign anything at the door	A signature on a doorstep contract is how storm chasers lock in work
Start permanent repairs before the adjuster sees the roof	Emergency tarping is fine and expected. A rebuilt valley is not
Guess at hail size in writing	Photograph the stone with an object for scale and let the measurement speak

What else belongs in the file?

Two public records are worth pulling and saving as screenshots on the same day.

The NOAA Storm Prediction Center publishes daily storm reports, including hail reports with size and time by location. If a one inch report sits near your zip code on the date in question, that supports your file. The National Weather Service Tulsa office also archives significant weather events for northeast Oklahoma.

Neither of these proves your roof was hit. They establish that hail of a given size fell near your address on a given day, which is often the first thing an adjuster wants to settle.

When should you call your carrier?

After the photos, and after someone has actually looked at the roof. A professional inspection tells you whether there is real damage before you open a claim, which matters because claim history follows the property. If a roof shows nothing but a few dinged vents, filing may cost you more in the long run than it returns.

If the damage is real, call your carrier and open the claim yourself. You are the policyholder. Your carrier assigns an adjuster and schedules an inspection, usually within a week or two after a widespread event, longer after a metro wide storm. Nobody can tell you in advance that a claim will be approved. Roof age, wear exclusions, your deductible and the adjuster’s findings all feed the decision, and the decision is the carrier’s.

Oklahoma also gives you a place to go if the process itself goes wrong. The Oklahoma Insurance Department handles consumer complaints about carriers and adjusters, and it is worth knowing that before you need it.

What happens at the inspection

We chalk a ten by ten foot test square on each slope and count strikes inside it. That is the same method most adjusters use, so the numbers line up when they arrive. Bruised shingles feel soft under a thumb and show a dark spot where granules were knocked off. Fracture of the shingle mat is what carriers look for. Surface scuffing on its own is often excluded as cosmetic.

Bring your photo set to that appointment. The ground level shots you took in the first hour frequently answer a question that the roof alone cannot.

Next step

Our storm and hail damage page explains what a documented inspection covers and what you get back in writing. We work Broken Arrow and the rest of the metro after every core, and the photo report comes to you either way, including when the answer is that your roof is fine.