How do I know if my roof has hail damage?
From the ground you mostly cannot, and that is the whole problem. Hail does not punch holes in a composition shingle, it fractures the fiberglass mat underneath and knocks granules loose, so the shingle carries on looking like a shingle. The reliable ground-level test is the soft metal on the property: gutter aprons, downspouts, vent caps and window wrap dent where a shingle only bruises. If those are dimpled, the roof took the same impacts and it is worth having someone look.
Start with the things you can reach
Walk the perimeter and look at every piece of soft, painted or bare metal on the house. Gutter aprons and downspouts show hail clearly because the metal is thin. Aluminum window and door wrap does the same. Vent caps and the thin metal fins on an outdoor cooling unit dent readily and are usually forgotten.
Look at fence caps, mailboxes and any painted patio furniture too. Wood fence tops splinter under hail in a distinctive way, and it dates the event as clearly as anything on the house.
What you are establishing is not roof damage but hail size. Pea-sized hail dents nothing and damages no roof. Hail that has dimpled a gutter apron was large enough to bruise a shingle.
What a qualifying impact looks like on the roof itself
A hail hit on a composition shingle is a dark circular spot where the granules have been knocked away, and pressing it gives slightly, because the mat below has fractured. That combination, the dark spot and the give, is what an adjuster is counting inside a test square.
Two things get mistaken for it. Blistering, which is a manufacturing or heat-related bubble in the shingle surface, looks similar and is not hail; blisters are irregular and often have a sharper crater edge. Mechanical damage from foot traffic, satellite installers or previous work is the other, and it clusters along walking paths rather than scattering randomly.
Random scatter across the whole slope is what hail looks like. Anything patterned, in lines or concentrated along a route somebody would walk, is something else.
Wind is the damage nobody looks for
The same storms that drop hail bring outflow gusts, and wind damages roofs differently: it breaks the strip of factory adhesive that seals each shingle to the one below, lifts the course, and drops it back. From the ground and from most of the roof nothing has changed.
The tell up close is a crease, a horizontal fracture line across a shingle where it folded back on itself. A creased shingle will not reseal, and it is the clearest physical evidence in a wind claim.
This is why storm damage should be assessed by hand along the rakes, eaves and ridge rather than by eye across the field.
Related questions
How big does hail need to be to damage a roof?
Roughly one inch, quarter-sized, is the usual threshold for composition shingle, and it depends on the age and condition of the roof. An older, brittle roof is damaged by smaller hail than a new one.
Can hail damage a roof without me hearing anything?
You will generally hear hail. What you will not hear is the wind damage that comes with the same storm, and that is at least as common.
My neighbors are getting new roofs. Is mine damaged?
It means a swath passed over the street, which is evidence rather than proof. Hail swaths are narrow and the two sides of a road can take different beatings. Get your own roof looked at.
Should I get on the roof myself to check?
No. Walking a roof damages it, walking an ageing roof damages it more, and falls from residential roofs are a leading cause of serious injury in this trade. The soft-metal check from the ground tells you whether it is worth a call.
