Appraisal
Definition
- Related pages
- 4
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
Appraisal is the dispute procedure written into most property policies for a disagreement about the amount of a loss. Either party demands it; each selects a competent and impartial appraiser; the two appraisers choose an umpire, or a court names one if they cannot agree; and an award signed by any two of the three sets the amount. The clause descends from the standard fire policy and is in nearly every homeowners form in the country.
It is a procedure about amount, not about coverage. An appraisal panel decides what the loss is worth and, in many states, what the loss is: which damage is hail and which is not, which slopes need replacing, what the repair costs. It does not decide whether the policy covers the loss, whether notice was timely, or whether the date of loss falls inside the period, and a carrier can pay an award and still contest coverage.
Because the panel is deciding what the storm did, it is deciding from evidence, and the weather record is the part of the evidence neither appraiser wrote. A panel with a dated, cited account of which storms are on record near the property, and when, is a panel arguing about the roof rather than about the weather.
In the report
How the document prints it
An appraisal panel reads the report the way a court would, which is what it was written for. The Findings state what the evidence establishes and how strongly, in a confidence grade spelled out in words; the Records list every row with its date, measurement, distance, bearing and source; the Sources and method section states how each source was searched and what it can establish. The same document, with the same fingerprint, can be put in front of both appraisers and the umpire, and a copy can be checked against the one issued at the verification address it prints.
Related
The terms this page uses and the guides that go further. Each is shown against its own example from the record.
-
Term
Umpire
The third member of an appraisal panel, chosen by the two appraisers or named by a court, whose agreement with either one makes an award.
-
Term
Proof of loss
The sworn statement a policyholder gives the insurer setting out what was lost, when, and for how much, which the policy may require before it pays.
-
Term
Matching
The question of whether replacing damaged material obliges the insurer to replace undamaged material so the repair reads as reasonably uniform.
-
Guide
Measured and detected: radar hail sizes against spotter reports
The record keeps a stone measured on the ground apart from a size computed from radar, because a court will ask which is which. This guide names the kinds of evidence as the report names them, states what a radar-derived size can and cannot say, explains why a measurement is drawn as a filled mark and a detection as a hollow one, and shows how to read the two on the same day.
Sources
The primary references. Each opens on the agency's own site.
The glossary defines the word. The report is what uses it.
Everything above is definition: what the word means in the document, and what it does not. None of it says what reached one roof.
Run the address and the archive is searched at the property: the storm, the date, the measured size, the distance and bearing from the roof, and the federal record each figure came from, in a document that states its own method. About a minute.
How this page is made
- The text
- Written by the editors and last revised 23 August 2026. It explains the record and how the report reads it; it contains no figure of its own.
- The example
- The archive holds nothing this page could show yet, so no example is printed. One appears, computed rather than written, as soon as the record holds a relevant day.
- Measured and detected
- A report from a person or an instrument is measured. A radar-derived size is detected, not measured, and is marked as such, here and in every document we issue. The two are never added together.
- What this is not
- A definition of a word the report uses. It is not a report on any property, and it states no opinion about one. The coverage page states what the record holds, by kind and by year.
About this record
Everything here is reproduced from public federal and volunteer weather records, as the agencies and observer networks that publish them released it. Titan Weather compiles the record; it does not observe the weather, and it is not affiliated with any source it cites.
No archive holds everything. Storms cross places where nobody is standing, instruments and spotters cover some areas better than others, sources revise their records, and recent reports can take weeks to arrive and settle. Where this page shows nothing, nothing was found in the sources searched, within the period and area it states. That is not a finding that no weather occurred.
These pages describe the public record near a place or on a date. They do not establish what reached any particular property, and nothing here is insurance, legal or engineering advice.