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After The Storm

After the Hail: What To Do First

The first forty-eight hours in the order that protects your house and your claim — and what Wisconsin law says about the crew at your door that afternoon.

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First 48 Hours

What To Do After A Hail Storm In Wisconsin, In Order

What to do after a hail storm in Wisconsin, in order: make it safe and dry, photograph everything including the hail beside a coin, note the date, get a free inspection, then report to your insurer with documentation in hand — and sign nothing on the doorstep. Filing before anyone has looked is a guess.

If the storm was the April 13–17, 2026 outbreak — 2.75-inch hail on Watertown, four inches east of Madison — the record of exactly what fell where is public, and the statutory clock under § 631.83 runs to April 2027.

Checklist

The First 48 Hours After Hail, Step By Step

Make it safe and dry

If water is coming in, stop it. Move what you can, contain what you cannot, and get the roof covered. Your policy’s Duties After Loss section requires reasonable steps to prevent further damage — mitigation is expected, not optional — and the insurer can decline the water damage that follows if you did nothing.

Photograph everything, including the hail itself

Dented gutters, downspouts and vents. Granules where the downspouts drain. Torn screens. Flattened fins on the air conditioner. Interior stains. And the hail, next to a coin for scale, before it melts. Your phone dates every one of them.

Note the date and time

Which storm caused which mark matters enormously later. Write down the date and roughly when. The NOAA Storm Events Database will carry the official record within a few months, and the town pages here link each storm.

Get an inspection

Before you file. Then the claim is based on what is up there rather than what you can see from the driveway, and you have a dated written report with photographs of every slope whether or not you go ahead.

Then report to your insurer

With documentation in hand and a contractor’s estimate available if they ask for one. You make this call. Under Wis. Stat. § 100.65(8) a roofer may not make it for you.

Do not sign on the doorstep

Not a contract, not an assignment of benefits, not a “work authorization”. Nothing that day, from anybody, including us. Wisconsin gives you a cancellation right on doorstep contracts — below — but the simpler protection is not signing.

To File Or Not

Should You File A Small Hail Claim At All? Honest Guidance

Only if there is damage worth claiming, and only an inspection tells you that. A claim below or near your deductible is not worth filing — you gain nothing and it sits on your loss history with the insurer — and if we walk the roof and find nothing claimable we say so in writing. The report is yours either way, and it is a dated record if a later storm hits the same roof.

A claim that looks small from the ground is often not, because hail bruises the mat under the granules and the roof looks fine until it fails early. A weather loss is not an at-fault loss, and hail across southern Wisconsin is priced regionally rather than pinned on a household; the larger risk runs the other way, because documented, unrepaired damage on file gives an insurer a reason to decline the next claim on the same roof as pre-existing. What hail bruising looks like, and ask your agent how your carrier treats weather claims before you decide.

Storm Chasers

About The Roofing Crews That Arrive The Next Morning

Large hail brings out-of-state crews within a day or two. They work fast, knock every door on the street, and want a signature before you have had a second opinion. Some do decent work. The structural problem is that they are gone before the roof has been through a winter, and a workmanship warranty is only worth the years the company is still there to honor it.

Three checks, in a minute: look the company up at the Wisconsin DSPS license lookup — every roofer pulling a permit on a house in this state needs a Dwelling Contractor Certification, and the record shows how long they have held it. Ask where the shop is. Ask whether the contract carries the cancellation notice. Then wait a day. The nine questions to ask.

Completed roof replacement, Watertown WI

Straight Answers

Questions After A Hail Storm

Days for mitigation, and inside your policy’s reporting window for the claim — a contract term, usually short, in the Duties After Loss section. The statute is separate: Wis. Stat. § 631.83(1)(a) gives you twelve months from the date of loss to bring an action on the policy. Sooner is materially better regardless, because attributing damage to one storm gets harder with every storm that follows.

Get the inspection first, then decide with a number in hand. A claim below or near your deductible is not worth filing — you gain nothing and it sits on your loss history — and we will say so. A claim that looks small from the ground is often not, because hail bruises the mat under the granules and the roof looks fine until it fails early. The report tells you which you have.

Get it inspected. Same storm and same street does not mean the same damage: pitch, orientation and the age of the shingles changed what each roof caught, and the south and west slopes usually take it worst. It is a strong reason to have somebody look, and a weak reason to sign anything.

Ask where the shop is, look the company up at the DSPS license lookup, ask for insurance certificates, and ask whether the deductible goes on the contract — anyone offering to waive it is offering something the state bans. Then take the quote away and read it tomorrow. Nine questions for the roofer at your door is the full list.

No. Hail-damaged shingles are more fragile, granule loss makes them slick, and a fall is a far worse outcome than a delayed inspection. The ground-level tells in the checklist above — gutters, downspouts, screens, air conditioner fins — are enough to justify a call.

Read it for the cancellation terms. If a seller came to you and you signed at home, Wis. Stat. § 423.202 gives you until midnight of the third business day after you received the required notice to cancel in writing. If the contract is for insurance-related work, a separate right lets you cancel within three business days of your insurer denying the claim. And a contract that lacks those notices is itself the problem — talk to your insurer before any work starts.

Related

More On Roof Insurance Claims

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The hub: what a contractor may and may not do in a claim, the sequence, and the six pages that go deeper.

All claims pages

The questions we get asked

Cost, timing, permits, insurance and warranties, answered plainly on one page.

Roofing FAQ

Your deductible

The crew offering to waive it is describing a forfeiture. What you actually pay, and why.

Deductibles

Storm damage repair

Tarping, documentation and the repair itself, by the crew that inspected it.

Storm damage

This page explains how Wisconsin law and a typical homeowner policy treat a roof claim. It is general information, not legal advice, and your own policy is the document that governs your claim. Where we quote a statute we link it so you can read it yourself.

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