Storm Damage Roof Checklist for Overland Park Homeowners
The storm came through around dinner, the hail sounded like gravel on the roof for four minutes, and now the sun's out and there's already a truck with out-of-state plates parked at the end of the cul-de-sac. Here's what to do in the next 24 hours, in order.
Right away: is water coming in?
Walk every room and look at ceilings, especially under valleys, around chimneys and at the top corners of exterior walls. Check the attic with a flashlight. If water is coming in:
- Move furniture, put down a bucket, and if it's dripping through a light fixture, turn off that breaker.
- Poke a small hole in a bulging ceiling to let the water out before the drywall comes down in one piece.
- Call for a tarp. Emergency roof repair Overland Park crews do after a storm starts with a tarp — $300–$700 — and your insurer usually reimburses it as mitigation.
- Photograph the interior damage before you clean anything up.
If no water is coming in, you have time. Use it.
Within the hour: photograph the ground evidence
Hail damage on shingles is invisible from the ground and not always obvious up close. What proves the storm hit your house hard enough to matter is the soft metal. Walk the property with your phone and photograph:
- Dents in gutters and downspouts — run your hand along the bottom of the gutter
- The AC condenser: bent fins are the single most reliable hail indicator
- Window screens, torn or dented
- The mailbox, grill lid, and any painted metal outdoor furniture
- Splatter marks — clean spots on a dirty deck rail, fence or driveway where hail knocked the grime off
- Shredded leaves and stripped branches
- Any shingles, ridge caps or pieces of shingle in the yard
- A hailstone next to a coin or tape measure, if any are left
Date-stamped photos of this stuff are what an adjuster looks at first. It costs nothing and it's gone in a week.
Same day: check the roof from the ground only
Stand back and look at each slope with binoculars if you have them. You're looking for:
- Missing shingles or tabs — usually on the slope that faced the wind, which here means south or west
- Creased shingles: a horizontal line across a tab where the wind folded it up and let it back down
- Ridge caps lifted or gone
- A dented or missing vent cap, or a bent turbine
- Debris in the valleys
- Anything hanging off the gutter
Don't go up. A shingle roof after hail is covered in loose granules and slides like ball bearings, and you can't assess bruising by eye anyway.
What hail actually does, so you know what you're waiting to hear
A hailstone hits a shingle and crushes the fiberglass mat under it, knocking the granules loose in a circle. The result is a bruise: a soft spot that gives under your thumb, usually with a little bare asphalt showing. Enough bruises on a slope and the roof is considered totaled, because every bruise is a spot where the asphalt is now exposed to sun and will crack within a couple of years. On older, brittle shingles the stone cracks the mat outright. Class 4 shingles are built to take the hit without the mat failing — the Class 4 page explains why most Johnson County insurers discount them.
Straight-line wind is the other Overland Park storm. It doesn't bruise; it lifts. A shingle whose seal strip has aged out gets picked up, creased at the nail line, and either dropped back or carried into the neighbor's yard. The creased ones look fine from the ground and leak the next time it rains sideways.
Before you sign anything
- Don't sign on the porch. The person who knocked on your door within hours of the storm is not the one you want on your roof. Anything worth signing is worth a day.
- Ask for the Kansas registration certificate. The Kansas Roofing Registration Act requires every roofing contractor to hold one, and you can check the name on the Attorney General's registry. A company that doesn't have it doesn't have insurance on file with the state either.
- Don't accept an offer to cover your deductible. It's illegal in Kansas and it means the invoice to your insurer is going to be padded with your name on it.
- Don't sign an assignment of benefits or a "contingency agreement" that commits you to a company before the claim is even approved.
The post on questions to ask roofing contractors in Overland Park has the full list.
Then: get it walked before you file
A claim isn't automatic. The adjuster marks a 10-by-10 square on each slope and counts bruises; below a certain count, the claim is denied, and a denied claim stays on your record. Have a roofer who'll still be here next year walk it, count, and tell you whether to file. If the count is there, file with your own insurer, on your own phone, and have the roofer meet the adjuster. The whole process is on the hail damage and insurance claims page.
If the count isn't there, the fix is a few shingles and a vent cap, $400–$1,200, and you keep your claim history clean for the storm that actually does the job.
Need roof work in Overland Park?
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