Hail Damage Repair

Ground-level clues worth checking first

• Granules in the gutters — impacts dislodge the protective granule layer, and it collects in gutters and at downspout outlets.
• Dented gutters, downspouts, and vents — soft metal dents easily and helps establish how significant the hail actually was.
• Dented AC units, window screens, or siding — if these show impact marks, the roof was very likely hit with similar force.

What hail damage looks like on asphalt shingles

Look for soft, circular bruising — impact marks that feel slightly spongy under light pressure, unlike the surrounding shingle. Larger hail cracks the mat underneath the granules, which shows up as granule loss in a roughly circular pattern. None of this is reliably visible from the ground or even from a ladder at the eave; it takes walking the roof surface, course by course.

Why bruising matters even without a visible crack

A bruised shingle has a compromised mat even when the surface still looks mostly intact. That weak spot accelerates granule loss and cracking at that exact point over the following one to two winters, as freeze-thaw cycling works on the already-damaged mat faster than it would on undamaged shingle. The failure shows up later, on its own timeline, which is why storm damage often surfaces as "random" leaks months after the storm itself.

Repair vs. replacement after hail

Isolated bruising on a handful of shingles is a repair — replace the affected shingles, matched where possible. Widespread bruising across most of the roof's surface area is a different situation: repairing dozens of individual shingles piecemeal rarely makes sense compared to replacement, both on cost and because a roof with that much surface damage is compromised as a system, not just in isolated spots.

For wind-specific damage, see Wind Damage Repair, or return to the storm damage overview.