Date of loss
Definition
- Related pages
- 6
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
The date of loss is the date a claim attaches to: the day the policyholder, the adjuster or the contractor says the damage happened. It is a date on a form before it is anything else, and it is the first thing every party to a claim checks against the record. A policy responds to what happened during its term, so the date decides which policy answers, which deductible applies, and whether the claim was filed in time.
The storm record does not contain a date of loss. It contains reports: a spotter measured hail at a place and a time, a radar placed a signature over a grid cell, an office issued a warning for a polygon. A date of loss is a claim about one of those days, and it is only as strong as the reports filed on it. A date with hail measured by several independent sources near the property is a date the record supports; a date with nothing on record near the property is one the record does not, and saying so is an answer rather than a failure.
The date on the claim and the date on the record are often not the same day, and the gap is the usual trouble. Damage is noticed weeks after the storm; a roof is inspected in one month for a storm in another; the nearest storm day is named from memory. The record is what resolves it: a list of the days near the property that carry hail, ranked by how many independent sources carried each, is how a date is chosen rather than guessed.
In the report
How the document prints it
The report is compiled for a window that contains the date of loss rather than for the date alone, because a claim dated to the wrong day is not helped by a report that agrees with it. Each storm day in the window is listed with the largest measured size, the largest detected size, the count of reports and the count of independent sources; the date the file names is shown in that list where it has anything on record, and the days around it are shown beside it so the reader can see whether a better-attested day sits a week away. The document states the window it searched and never states an opinion about which day the damage happened on.
From the record
23 Aug 2026
The most recent date the record would support
- Hail reports on the day
- 40
- Independent sources
- 2
- Largest measured on the ground
- 1.75″
- States filed under
- 14
23 August 2026 is the most recent day on which hail reached the severe criterion of 1.00″ anywhere in the record: 40 hail reports carried by 2 independent sources, the largest measured on the ground 1.75″. A claim dated to that day, near one of the places in its footprint, names a date the record holds.
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 discovery
The day damage was first noticed, as distinct from the day the storm happened; the claim turns on the gap between the two.
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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.
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Guide
How far away a hail report can be and still count
A hail report is a point: where a person stood, or where a radar placed a signature. A property is another point. The distance between them is the first thing a reader checks and the first thing a reader misreads. This guide states what a distance establishes, how the report bands it, and why a record filed to a county cannot be measured from at all.
Sources
The primary references. Each opens on the agency's own site.
The finder lists every day with hail on record within 10 miles of an address in the last 2 years, ranked by how many independent sources carried it, so the day a file names is a day the record holds.
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
- Drawn from the archive when the page was compiled, 24 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 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.