What should I do first after storm damage to my roof?

Photograph it from the ground before anything is touched, then get it tarped, then start the claim. In that order. A roof made watertight before it was documented is a roof whose damage now has to be argued from memory. Do not climb up to look — more people are hurt inspecting storm damage than by the storm.

Will my insurer pay for a tarp?

Emergency mitigation is generally covered, and most policies require you to prevent further damage rather than let water keep coming in. Keep the invoice and the photographs taken before the tarp went on. The two together are what turn a mitigation cost into a reimbursed one.

How does an adjuster decide it was the storm and not old age?

Pattern and consistency. Wind damage concentrates at edges — rakes, eaves, ridges — and shows fresh tears, unsealed tabs and clean breaks rather than the uniform curling and granule loss of an old roof. A report that says what failed, where, and whether it is consistent with the wind direction and speed on that date is answering the question the adjuster is actually asking.

My neighbours all had roofers knock on the door after the storm. Should I use one?

Be careful. This region fills with out-of-province crews after a bad storm, and some are competent. The questions worth asking are whether they carry WSIB coverage and liability insurance, who honours the workmanship warranty in two years, and whether they will put the assessment in writing before you sign anything.

Is it worth claiming a small amount of damage?

Sometimes not. A claim below or near your deductible can cost more in future premium than it returns, and a few lifted shingles may be a repair rather than a claim. Get it assessed and priced first, then decide. That decision is easier with a written assessment in hand and impossible without one.

What a Wind Damage Claim Actually Needs

Southwestern Ontario is the most tornado-active corner of the country. Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project confirms and maps events here every season, and the great majority of roof damage comes not from a tornado but from the straight-line wind that arrives with the same storms.

Chatham, Leamington and Simcoe sit in the worst of it, with flat farmland behind them and no meaningful upwind shelter, so a roof there sees close to the full wind speed the storm is carrying. Goderich has its own history — the tornado that went through the town square in August 2011 is the reason nobody on that shoreline treats wind as an abstraction.

The order matters more than the speed

Photograph. Then tarp. Then claim.

That is the single most useful sentence on this page, and it is the bit people get wrong — completely understandably, because water is coming in and every instinct says stop it.

But a roof made watertight before anyone documented it is a roof whose damage now has to be argued from memory, to an adjuster who was not standing in your driveway on Sunday morning. The tarp is cheap next to that.

Photograph from the ground, from several angles, including the debris on the lawn and in the eavestrough. Get the date. If a neighbour’s tree came down at the same time, photograph that too — it establishes the event.

And please do not go up to look. More people get hurt inspecting storm damage than get hurt by the storm — on a surface that is still wet and now has loose material sliding about on it. Whatever you can see from a ladder, we can see better and more safely.

What wind actually does

It almost never lifts a roof out of the middle. It finds an edge — a rake, an eave, a ridge, somewhere the starter course ran short or a nail went in high — and peels from there.

That is why damage after a storm concentrates at the perimeter, and it is why a roof that visibly lost six shingles has usually lost the sealant bond on many more than six. Those tabs are still in place and no longer stuck down. They will come off in the next storm, and whether they are included in the claim depends entirely on whether anyone looked for them.

The nailing pattern is the whole argument

A shingle rated for high wind is only rated that way when it is fastened the way the manufacturer specifies: the right number of nails, placed in the nailing zone, driven flush rather than overdriven or high.

Four nails instead of six, or nails placed above the strip, is invisible from the ground and is the most common reason a wind claim gets disputed — because it moves the cause from the weather to the installation. It is also the reason the replacement specification matters years before anyone thinks about a claim.

What an assessment has to contain

An adjuster is deciding one question: is this damage consistent with the reported event, or is it the ordinary ageing of an old roof?

A useful report answers that directly. What failed, where on the roof, which elevation, consistent with wind from which direction. Photographs of each area. Whether the surrounding shingles have lost their seal. Whether the underlayment or deck is exposed. And what it will take to make good.

That is a different document from a sales quote, and the two should not be the same piece of paper. A report that recommends a full replacement on every roof it sees is worth nothing to an adjuster and they know it.

Old roof, real damage

An old roof can still suffer genuine storm damage, and a claim is not automatically weaker because the roof is twenty years old. What weakens it is a report that cannot separate the two, which is why the distinction gets drawn explicitly rather than left for someone else to argue.

The knock on the door

After a serious storm this region fills up with crews working door to door, some local and some from several provinces away.

Three questions sort them out quickly.

Do they carry WSIB coverage and liability insurance, and will they show you. Who honours the workmanship warranty in two years, and will that company still exist by then. And will they put the assessment in writing before you sign anything.

Anyone who will not answer the third one is selling urgency, not roofing.

When not to claim

A claim near or below your deductible can cost more in future premium than it returns. A few lifted shingles on an otherwise sound roof is frequently a repair rather than a claim, and the honest answer says so.

That decision is straightforward with a written assessment and a price in hand, and impossible without one. Which is why the assessment is provided whether or not any work follows.