Know Your Hail! Identifying Hail Damage

By Cayden Wemple. 

Hail can completely destroy your roof without you even knowing. Get ahead of the hail with expert tips from Western Colloid. 

Hail is a weather event that tends to strike when you least expect it, and even small bits of hail can wreak havoc on your roof. Even though it seems like hail would leave obvious signs of damage, it actually takes professionals a thorough inspection to identify the damage more often than you’d think.  

On a new episode of The Understanding Roof Restoration Podcast, host Karen Edwards discussed how to identify some of the hail damage with Greg Hlavaty and Hal Lelan of Western Colloid. Greg confirms that identifying hail damage is not “cut and dried,” and It takes a really good roofer to identify the damage. Greg says, “Different types of roofs are tough to find out if there's really damage, especially immediately after the hail event because what happens is it might make little shatter cracks in that roof, depending what type of roof it is, that aren't very visible immediately because it's probably wet and clean and had rain also, along with the hail.” 

The damage from hail is often consequential because it can leave leaks in the roof. A lot of that damage is hard to identify because it’s in spots that are hard to identify for the untrained eye. That’s why it’s important to call a professional after a hail event. Hal says, “Most of the damage, is on the back sides, on the underside. You can see the shattering where you can't really see it on the surface. But you had an event, the roof's leaking, and these guys are investigating. They'll take pieces out and check the back. And it's clear as day when you see that.” 

Listen to the whole discussion here to learn more about hail damage.  

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About Cayden  

Cayden is a reporter for RoofersCoffeeShop, MetalCoffeeShop and AskARoofer. When he isn’t writing about roofs, he’s usually playing guitar or writing songs for his musical endeavors.