Hail and Storm Damage Roofing in Tulsa, OK

What hail actually does to a shingle

A hail stone hitting an asphalt shingle knocks granules loose and bruises the fiberglass mat underneath. The granules are the sun protection. Once they are gone the asphalt oxidizes quickly and the shingle starts to fail from that spot outward. A fresh hail hit looks like a dark circular mark with a soft center that gives slightly under a thumb. Old mechanical damage, blistering and foot traffic all look different, which is why an inspection has to be done from the roof rather than from the driveway.

Why we chalk a test square

Insurance adjusters in Oklahoma work to a strike count inside a ten by ten foot square on each slope. We use the same method so the two reports line up. The chalk square stays on the roof, so when the adjuster arrives the marks are already there and the conversation is about what is inside the square rather than about whether anyone looked. We also photograph the north, south, east and west slopes separately, because hail usually comes in on a bearing and one or two slopes take most of it.

The soft metals tell the story

Shingles are ambiguous. Aluminum is not. Gutter faces, downspouts, fascia wraps, roof vents, turbines, garage doors and the condenser fins on the AC unit all dent from the same storm, and those dents are easy to date and hard to argue with. When we find crisp dents on soft metals but only light marking on the shingle, we say that plainly.

March to June is the season

Green Country takes its worst hail in spring. Warm moist air comes up from the Gulf and runs into cold air over the plains, and the storms that result drop hail cores that can be a mile wide and thirty miles long. That is why one street in Broken Arrow gets hammered while a street a mile away is untouched. If you heard it hit hard and your neighbors are getting inspections, get yours looked at too.

Spotting a storm chaser

After a big event the doorknockers arrive. A few checks sort the real contractors from the tourists. Oklahoma requires roofing contractors to register with the Construction Industries Board, and the registration number is supposed to appear in their advertising, so ask for it and look it up on the CIB site. Ask where their office is and drive past it. Be careful with any paper handed to you on the doorstep, because some of those forms assign your claim benefits to the contractor. Do not hand over money before materials are on your driveway.

Wind uplift and ridge failures

Oklahoma straight line winds routinely hit 60 to 70 mph in a strong line of storms. Wind gets under the edge of a shingle at the rake or the ridge and peels the course back. On newer Owasso and Jenks builds with long unbroken ridge lines and open ground behind them, the ridge cap is almost always the first thing to go. Ridge cap is cheap to replace and expensive to ignore, because once it is off the ridge vent underneath is exposed straight to the weather.

If water is already coming into the house, read our emergency tarping page first. It covers what to do in the next ten minutes, how fast we can get there and how tarping fits alongside a claim.