Inception of loss
Definition
- Related pages
- 5
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
Inception of loss is the phrase the standard fire policy uses for the moment a loss began. The policy's suit clause runs from it: an action on the policy must be brought within a stated time after inception of the loss, and courts in most states read that as the date of the event that caused the damage rather than the date the claim was denied or the damage found. For a hail or wind claim, the inception is the storm.
That makes it a date the record can test. A policyholder who says the loss began on a given day is saying hail or wind came that day, and the record either carries reports near the property for it or does not. Where the date is uncertain, the days around it are read for what the record holds on each; where nothing is on record for weeks on either side, that is an answer a reader has to take seriously.
Inception is not discovery. A loss can begin on a day nobody was watching and be discovered a season later, and the two dates are kept apart because different clocks run from each. The record speaks only to the first of them.
In the report
How the document prints it
The report frames every figure by the period it searched, printed in the masthead or on the cover, and lists each storm day in that period by date. A reader establishing inception reads the Records section for the earliest day near the address that carries a measured or detected report, and the Findings section for how many independent kinds of evidence support it. The document states the date of each record as its source published it and offers no opinion on when a loss began; it shows which days the record supports, so that the inception a file names can be checked against them.
From the record
23 Aug 2026
A day the clock could run from
- 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 with enough hail on record to carry its own page: 40 hail reports filed under 14 states, carried by 2 independent sources. A loss dated to it near a place in its footprint has an inception 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 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
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
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.
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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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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 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.