What Hail Damage Looks Like on a Roof — and How to Tell If Yours Has It
Mostly it does not look like anything from the ground. The commonest form of real hail damage is a bruise in the shingle mat with almost nothing visible from below — which is why the useful first question is not what can I see but was my roof even under hail. We can usually answer that before anyone goes near it.
Get a Free Roof AssessmentFive Things Hail Actually Leaves Behind
Real hail damage is random. A line of identical marks is almost always foot traffic or a manufacturing pattern, not weather. Hail arrives from one direction and lands where it lands.
1. Bruising you feel before you see
A hail strike crushes the mat under the surface without necessarily removing granules. It reads as a soft, slightly dented spot — closer to a bruise on fruit than a hole. It is the commonest form of real hail damage and the one most often missed from the ground, because there is very little to see.
2. Granule loss in scattered circles
Not the even wear of an ageing roof but random dark circles where the coloured granules have been knocked off, exposing the asphalt underneath. Granules are the shingle’s sunscreen; once they are gone that patch starts ageing far faster than the roof around it.
3. Shiny or blackened spots
Where enough granules have gone, the exposed asphalt looks darker and slightly glossy against the matt surface nearby. On a sunny day it is often the first thing visible from the air.
4. Cracks radiating from a point
Larger stones can fracture the mat outright, leaving splits that spread from the impact. This is the form most likely to leak, and the least likely to be visible until someone is on the roof or flying it.
5. Dents on the soft metal around it
Gutters, downspouts, vents, flashing and air-conditioner fins dent before shingles do. They are the honest witnesses: if they are peppered and the roof looks untouched, the roof usually is not.
If you check one thing from the ground, make it the soft metal — gutters, downspouts, vents, the fins on your outdoor AC unit. They dent at smaller hail sizes than shingles do, so a peppered gutter beside an apparently untouched roof usually means the roof is not untouched.
Was Your Roof Even Under Hail?
This is the question nearly everyone skips, and it is the cheapest one to answer. We keep our own storm archive for 7 Dallas–Fort Worth counties — Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Parker, Tarrant — down to subdivision level. Across the 2026 season through 30 September it recorded 18 separate days of hail at one inch or more, covering 481,083 homes across 109 cities and 14,231 distinct subdivisions.
So before we quote anything, we can usually tell you which dates your street was under hail and how big the stones were. That turns a sales conversation into a records question, and it occasionally ends with us telling you that nothing happened at your address at all.
Where it concentrated
| County | Homes under 1″+ hail | Days |
|---|---|---|
| Dallas | 257,470 | 11 |
| Tarrant | 83,706 | 8 |
| Collin | 52,105 | 9 |
| Denton | 46,837 | 4 |
| Parker | 19,787 | 6 |
| Ellis | 10,800 | 6 |
| Johnson | 10,378 | 2 |
Our feed covers 7 of the 13 MSA counties. It does not cover Hood, Hunt, Kaufman, Rockwall, Somervell, Wise. Every figure here is therefore a floor, not a ceiling — we would rather publish a number we can stand behind than a bigger one we cannot. Computed 6 October 2026.
One storm is rarely the story
21 cities took one-inch-plus hail on three or more separate dates. Dallas saw 8 days, Fort Worth 6, and Weatherford, Azle and Arlington between 4 and 5.
A roof rarely fails from one storm. It fails from the accumulation — and the accumulation is invisible unless somebody wrote the dates down. The four days from 25–28 April alone accounted for 67% of the whole season across 132 ZIP codes.
The most recent qualifying hail we recorded was 27 September, up to 1.75″ across Parker County and west Fort Worth.
Size Decides Almost Everything
One inch — quarter size — is the line most carriers treat as potentially damaging to asphalt shingles. Below it, damage is possible on a roof already brittle with age, but it is unusual. Above it, the question stops being whether and starts being how much.
| Hail size | About the size of | Homes under it |
|---|---|---|
| 2.00″ | hen egg | 3,594 |
| 1.75″ | golf ball | 24,410 |
| 1.50″ | ping-pong ball | 42,195 |
| 1.25″ | half dollar | 151,636 |
| 1.00″ | quarter | 259,248 |
This is also why a storm that sounds dramatic sometimes does nothing. Three-quarter inch hail rattling your windows for ten minutes is loud and almost never a claim.
An Assessment, Not an Inspection
In Texas, “inspection” is a regulated term tied to TREC licensing, and what we do is not that. We assess the condition of a roof and score it against consistent criteria. The distinction is not pedantry: if you ever quote us to an insurer, an adjuster or a buyer, it matters that the words describe exactly what was done and by whom.
Plenty of companies use the more official-sounding word because it closes better. We would rather you were able to repeat what we told you without it falling apart under a question.
How the Assessment Works
- We check the record first — the dates and hail sizes your address actually saw, from our archive, before anyone turns up
- An FAA Part 107 pilot flies the roof — every slope, including the steep and the fragile, which nobody should be walking on to find out
- Condition is scored, not guessed — the same criteria every time, so your roof this year is comparable to your roof next year
- You get a dated report — imagery and a Roof Health Score, yours to keep and to hand to anyone you like
- An honest recommendation — repair, treat or replace, and frequently that nothing needs doing yet
It costs nothing and carries no obligation. If your roof is fine, we will say so and the report is still yours — a dated baseline is worth having before the next storm, not after it.
What Happens If There Is Damage
Three honest outcomes, and the right one depends on the roof rather than on what we would rather sell.
A claim may not be worth filing. Texas wind and hail deductibles are usually a percentage of your dwelling coverage, not a flat figure — 2% of a $500,000 limit is $10,000, and a great many repairs fall inside that. We publish two of our own repair invoices, line by line, so you can see what that arithmetic really looks like.
Localised damage is a repair. Lifted or cracked shingles in one area, failed flashing, a split boot. That is work, not a rebuild.
A sound but ageing roof may be a candidate for treatment — restoring flexibility rather than tearing off, with a written warranty running from five up to twenty years depending on the product and the condition of the roof. How restoration works, and how it differs from replacement.
And sometimes the roof is finished and replacement is the answer. We will tell you that too.
Hail Damage Questions
What does hail damage look like on a roof?
Scattered dark circles where granules have been knocked off, soft bruised spots you can feel more easily than see, shiny patches of exposed asphalt, and sometimes cracks spreading from a single impact point. Genuine hail damage is random rather than patterned — a line of identical marks is usually manufacturing or foot traffic, not hail. Check the gutters, vents and air-conditioner fins too: soft metal dents before shingles do.
How can I tell if my roof has hail damage?
From the ground, mostly you cannot, and that is the honest answer. Bruising leaves almost nothing to see from below. What you can check without climbing is the collateral — dents in gutters, downspouts, vents and AC fins — and whether your address was actually under hail. We hold a storm archive covering 7 Dallas–Fort Worth counties, so we can usually tell you the dates and hail size your street saw before anyone goes near the roof.
What size hail damages a roof?
Around one inch — quarter size — is the threshold most carriers treat as potentially damaging to asphalt shingles. Below that, damage is possible on an old or brittle roof but unusual. Of the hail we recorded in the 2026 season through 30 September, 259,248 homes were under quarter-size hail and 3,594 were under two-inch, which is hen-egg sized.
Is a hail damage roof assessment free?
Ours is, and there is no obligation attached to it. We fly the roof, score it against consistent criteria and give you the report whether or not you do anything with it — including when the answer is that your roof is fine and needs nothing.
Why do you call it an assessment and not an inspection?
Because in Texas "inspection" is a regulated term tied to TREC licensing, and what we do is not that. We assess the condition of a roof and score it. The distinction matters if you are ever quoting us to an insurer or a buyer, so we would rather be precise about it than borrow a word that sounds more official than it is.
How long after a hail storm should I get my roof checked?
Sooner is better, because most Texas policies limit how long you have to report a loss and a claim gets harder to argue the longer the evidence weathers. But there is no deadline on finding out: a roof hit in April is still carrying that damage now, and the dated record of what it looked like is worth having whether or not you file.
Can you tell if hail damage is old or new?
Often, yes. Fresh impacts expose asphalt that has not yet oxidised, so the exposed spots look darker and sharper-edged than older ones, which fade and dull. Combined with the dates our archive holds for your address, that usually settles whether damage belongs to the storm you are asking about or an earlier one.
Storm figures are our own, computed 6 October 2026 over the 2026 season through 30 September across 7 DFW counties. They exclude the 30 September event, which brought damaging wind and no hail and would otherwise distort every total on this page.
Find Out Before You Guess
Free drone assessment, a measured condition score, and the dates your street was actually under hail — including when the answer is that nothing happened.
- Drone roof assessment — engineering-grade condition report
- Honest answer — protect, repair, or replace; the data decides
- Written warranty — 5 to 20 years depending on your roof
