Soft metal is where a hailstorm signs its name

A hailstone that hits a shingle transfers its energy into a flexible, granulated, asphalt-backed mat that deforms, absorbs, and springs most of the way back. A hailstone of the same size that hits a section of aluminium gutter coil, which is around thirty thousandths of an inch thick, deforms it permanently. The dent is still there next year. It is still there when you sell the house.

This is enormously useful, because it turns a set of parts nobody thinks about into a dated instrument record of the storm. It is also frequently over-read, so it is worth being clear about what a dimple does and does not establish.

What a dent proves and what it only suggests

It proves that hail of a certain minimum size struck this property, from a particular direction, hard enough to deform metal. That is not nothing. A great many hail claims fall over at exactly the question of whether the storm actually reached this address, because a hail core can be a mile wide and the street behind you can have had nothing.

It suggests that the roof above took comparable impacts, and it tells the inspector which slopes to concentrate on. What it does not do is establish that the shingles are compromised. Shingles have their own thresholds, and those depend on the age, the brand, the temperature on the day, and the angle of the slope relative to the storm. A dimpled downspout with a genuinely intact roof above it is a real outcome and an honest inspector will tell you so.

The survey order, from the ground

Do this from the driveway and the garden. Do not put a ladder up after a storm, particularly not on a wet roof, and particularly not to satisfy curiosity about something that is not leaking.

1. Downspouts, all four elevations

   Walk the perimeter and look along each downspout with the light raking across it rather than head on. Dimples show as a broken reflection. Note which sides have them and which do not.

2. Gutter faces and the gutter apron

   The outward face of the gutter is the second softest surface. The apron, the strip of metal that tucks under the first shingle course, is the third. Both take clean impressions.

3. The air conditioning condenser

   The fins on a condenser unit are the softest metal on any house. If the fins on one side are flattened and combed over, that side of the house took direct hail. This is the single most reliable ground-level indicator there is.

4. Painted surfaces at a low angle

   Garage door panels, steel entry doors, the mailbox, window and gutter trim, and any painted metal railing. Look for chipped paint at the centre of a small dish. Vinyl siding cracks rather than dents, and cracked siding is a strong indicator on its own.

5. Soft organic evidence, if you are quick

   Stripped leaves under a tree, shredded hostas, punched window screens, dimples in a wooden deck rail, and marks on the top of a fence cap. All of this disappears within a fortnight, which is one more reason to walk it early.

What an inspector adds once they are on the roof

The metal on the roof itself carries the clearest record of all, because it is horizontal and directly exposed. Valley metal, drip edge, ridge vent caps, box vent tops, turbine housings, the collars on pipe boots, the counter flashing at a chimney, and any lead or aluminium plumbing jack. Each of these is checked and photographed elevation by elevation, and the pattern across them is what turns a set of individual dents into a directional finding.

Two things that mislead people

Old dents. Metal keeps a record, and it keeps every record. A downspout can carry hail dents from three separate storms across a decade, and a dent has no date on it. What dates a dent is fresh bright metal at the centre where the coating cracked, or a photograph of the same downspout taken before. This is why the dated inspection matters more than the dents do.

Absence of dents. No dimpled metal does not clear the roof. Small hail driven hard by wind can strip granules from an aged shingle while barely marking a gutter, and a house with all-vinyl trim and buried downspouts may have almost no soft metal to read. The survey is an indicator, not a verdict.