Date of discovery
Definition
- Related pages
- 5
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
The date of discovery is the day a policyholder first noticed the damage, or first had reason to. It is not the date of the storm. A roof is rarely inspected on the evening hail falls; the damage is found when a ceiling stains, when a neighbour's roof is replaced, or when a contractor knocks on the door months later. The claim file records both dates, and the distance between them is where most of the argument about a hail claim takes place.
The two dates answer to different rules. The date of loss decides which policy period responds and how the deductible applies; the date of discovery bears on whether notice was prompt, whether a suit was timely, and in some states whether the claim can be brought at all. A policyholder who discovers the damage late is not barred by that alone, but the later the discovery, the more the file depends on the storm record to say which day the loss belongs to.
The storm record does not know when anyone looked at the roof. It knows which days carried hail near the property, how many independent sources carried each, and what size was measured or detected. That is what a discovery is read against: the record is searched backward from the day of discovery, and it states which days inside the policy period carry hail and how well each is attested; which of them the loss belongs to is the file's to establish.
In the report
How the document prints it
The report does not print a date of discovery; it prints the window that was searched and every storm day inside it. The document is compiled from a start date to an end date rather than for a single day, so a reader who found damage on one date and needs to know what the record holds before it reads the storm days in the Records section, each with its date, its measurement, its distance and bearing from the address and its source. The Findings state how many days carried what, and the masthead or cover states the period, so the gap between discovery and occurrence can be read from the document rather than argued from memory.
From the record
26 Aug 2026
The record is discovered late too
- Reports filed so far
- 156
- Settles by
- 17 February 2028
- Revision window
- 7 to 540 days
The national sources are still filing reports for 26 August 2026: 156 reports so far, with the day settling by 17 February 2028, between 7 and 540 days after it. A roof is usually inspected later than that, and the record it is read against has finished by then.
Measured Detected, not measured
The page these figures come fromRelated
The terms this page uses and the guides that go further. Each is shown against its own example from the record.
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Term
Date of loss
The calendar date a claim says the damage occurred, which the storm record either holds a report for or does not.
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Term
Inception of loss
The moment a loss began, which the standard fire policy uses to start the clock on suit and which a storm claim dates to the storm.
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Term
Policy period
The dates a policy is in force, stated on its declarations page; only a loss that began inside them is the policy's to answer.
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Term
Storm day
A calendar date on which hail, wind or tornado reports were filed, counted as one day however many reports it carries.
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Guide
How a date of loss is established, and how it is contested
A date of loss is a claim about one calendar day. Most courts have read it as the day the storm fell rather than the day the damage was found, and a policy answers only for days inside its term, so the date is tested before anything else is. This guide states how the date is set, how a carrier checks it, where it is most often wrong, and what a record has to show for the date to hold.
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. Ready in minutes.
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
- Drawn from the archive when the page was compiled, 27 August 2026, and rebuilt daily as the record deepens. Every figure in the panel marked From the record is computed, not written, and links to the page it came from.
- 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 observers cover some areas better than others, sources revise their records, and recent reports can take weeks to arrive and settle. Coverage also thins as the years go back: an early quiet stretch may describe who was watching rather than what the weather did. 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.
A record sits where its source filed it. Reports made from the ground are commonly logged against a town, a landmark or an offset from one rather than the spot where the measurement was taken, so any distance shown for one carries that source's own location error. Radar detections and warning geometry are instrument-located and do not.
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.