What Hail Damage Looks Like on a Roof

Look for random circular impacts, roughly the size of the hail that fell, where the surface granules have been knocked away and the darker asphalt mat shows through. Press one with a thumb. A cosmetic scuff feels solid. A bruise feels soft, slightly spongy, the way a bruise on an apple does - that softness is the fiberglass mat fractured underneath, and it is the difference between damage that matters and damage that does not. The distribution is the other tell: hail is random, and it does not fall in rows or align with anything.

Aluminum and steel record hail precisely. Look at the gutter faces, the downspout elbows, the furnace flue caps, the turtle vents and the air conditioning condenser fins. Fresh dents expose bright, unweathered metal at the bottom of the impact. Old dents have dulled to match the surrounding surface. This is the most reliable dating evidence a roof carries.

Cedar splits. A hail split is fresh, sharp-edged, and shows light unweathered wood in the break, often with an impact bruise or indentation at one end. An age split has grayed to match the surface and typically runs with the grain from an existing check. Cedar hail damage documents unusually well once you know the difference.

These materials crack and spall rather than bruise. Look for fresh chips at the exposed edge of a tile, spalled flakes of slate on the ground or in the gutters, and hairline cracks that run across rather than along the grain. Slate damage is easy to miss and expensive to ignore, because a cracked slate stays in place and leaks quietly.

Blistering, which is a manufacturing or ventilation issue and shows as raised bubbles rather than impact craters. Granule loss concentrated in the runoff paths below valleys, which is normal water erosion. Uniform wear across sun-exposed slopes, which is age. Mechanical scuffing in a straight line, which is foot traffic. An honest contractor tells you when what you have is one of these.