Starting from the ground
Before a ladder ever goes up, we walk the perimeter of the house and look at what hail does to softer materials first. Bent gutter aprons, dented downspouts, chipped paint on window sills facing the storm, and torn window screens all tell us roughly which direction the hail came from and how hard it hit. A yard full of stripped leaves under a tree usually means the same storm bruised the roof above it.
Reading the shingles
On the roof we are looking for granule loss first: soft, dark bruises where the mat under the shingle has been hit hard enough to knock the protective coating loose. A single hit might just be cosmetic. A slope covered in them, especially on the side that faced the storm, usually means the shingle's remaining life has been cut short even if nothing is leaking yet.
We also check for cracked or split shingles, lifted tabs, and any spot where the sealant strip has broken loose. None of that shows from the street, and none of it shows up well in a photo taken from a phone at ground level.
The parts people forget
Hail does not stop at the shingles. We check every vent cap, the pipe boots around plumbing stacks, the flashing at chimneys and skylights, and the metal edges along the eaves and rakes. These smaller components fail quietly, and a cracked pipe boot from an old hailstorm is one of the more common leaks we get called out for months later, long after the storm that caused it has been forgotten.
Gutters, downspouts, and the AC unit
We also walk the gutters and check the air conditioner condenser fins, because adjusters use both as evidence. Dented gutters and dinged fins are hard to fake and easy to date, which makes them useful when a claim is under review. If the fins are undamaged but the roof looks rough, that mismatch is worth a closer look before anyone assumes the worst.
What comes after the walk
Every roof walk ends with photos of what we found, slope by slope, and a plain answer about what we think happened. Sometimes that means telling a homeowner their roof is fine and they can skip a claim entirely. Other times it means walking them through what a claim looks like and what to expect from an adjuster's visit. Either way, the point of the walk is the same: give you something solid to decide from, not a guess shouted up from the yard.