What are the signs of hail damage I should look for?
Dark bruised spots on the shingles where the granules have been knocked off, granules collecting at the bottom of the downspouts, dents on gutters, vent caps, window screens and the air conditioner fins, and soft spots underfoot. Almost none of that is visible from the ground, which is why a roof that took a beating usually looks untouched from the driveway.
Hail bruises a shingle instead of breaking it
An asphalt shingle is a fiberglass mat coated in asphalt and surfaced with ceramic granules. The granules are the sunscreen: they stop ultraviolet light reaching the asphalt, and without them the asphalt oxidises and goes brittle in a few seasons.
When hail lands, it does two things at once. It knocks granules off in a circle around the strike, and the impact fractures the mat underneath. Neither makes a hole. The roof does not leak that week, or that year. It leaks once the exposed asphalt has weathered through, which is commonly two to four years later, by which time nobody connects the ceiling stain to the storm and the claim window on that date of loss has usually closed.
That delay is the whole reason the trade inspects after storms rather than after leaks.
The soft metals tell you before the shingles do
Aluminum and thin steel dent at a hail size well below the size it takes to bruise a shingle, so they are the early warning and the evidence. Look at the face of the gutters in raking light, the tops of the downspouts, the caps on the turbine and box vents, the valley metal, window screens, the garage door, and the fins on the outdoor air conditioner unit.
A scatter of round dents across several of those is a strong sign that hail of a meaningful size landed on this address. It is also what an adjuster looks for first, because unlike a shingle, a dented vent cap is hard to argue with.
Directionality is the giveaway
Hail comes in at an angle, driven by the storm wind, so damage concentrates on the slopes facing the direction the storm came from. In North Texas that is usually the south and west elevations. A roof with heavy marking on the west slope and a clean east slope is the signature of a real hail event.
Uniform wear across every slope is age rather than hail, and knowing the difference is what stops a homeowner filing a claim that will be denied.
What a professional inspection adds
A proper hail inspection chalks a test square, usually ten feet by ten feet, on each slope and counts the strikes inside it. Carriers use hit counts per square to decide whether a slope is damaged enough to warrant replacement rather than repair, so an inspection that produces a count is speaking the same language as the claim.
Every strike gets photographed with something in frame for scale, because a photograph of a bruise with no reference in it proves very little. Add the date, the address and the soft metals, and you have a file rather than an opinion.
Related questions
How small can hail be and still cause damage?
Around one inch is the usual threshold for shingle damage, though an older brittle roof can be damaged by smaller stones, and wind speed matters as much as size.
Can I check it from the ground?
Partly. The gutters, downspouts, screens and air conditioner are all at ground level and worth photographing. The shingles themselves are not assessable from below.
Will damage show up on a home inspection?
Not reliably. General home inspectors are not hail specialists and many will not walk a roof at all.