A term of the claim

Prior storm

An earlier storm that reached the same property before the one a claim is about, and the usual reason a hail claim is disputed.

Definition

Related pages: 5
Last revised: 23 August 2026

A prior storm is any storm on record near the property before the one the claim names. In hail country there is nearly always one: a roof that has stood for a decade has been under several hail days, and which of them left which mark is a question an adjuster, a contractor and an engineer will each answer differently. The term carries no judgement; it is a date earlier than the date of loss with something on record for it.

Prior storms matter for three reasons. A loss that began under an earlier policy period is not this policy's to pay. Damage that pre-dates the date of loss is not damage from the storm claimed, and a carrier that can show it may owe only for what the later storm added. And a roof that was already damaged when the claimed storm arrived raises the question of segregation, which the policyholder usually carries the burden of answering.

The record is the only neutral account of what the prior storms were. It lists every day near the property that carried hail or wind, measured apart from detected, with the number of independent sources for each, back as far as the archive reaches. A file that lists the prior storms itself, before the other side does, is a file that has read the record.

In the report

How the document prints it

The report lists every storm day inside the window it was compiled for, not only the date of loss, so a prior storm inside that window appears as its own rows in the Records section with its date, measurement, distance and source, and as its own day in the Findings. A reader checking for prior storms sets the window to reach back as far as the roof's age or the earlier policy period requires; the Sources and method section states how far each source's record reaches, and the Limitations note any stretch the archive could not cover, so an absence of prior storms reads as a searched absence rather than an unsearched one.

From the record

The place with the most prior storms on record

Hail days on record: 63
Largest size on record: 4.00″
Counted within: 10 mi

Colorado Springs, CO has more hail days on record within 10 mi of its centre than any other place in the archive: 63 hail days, the largest 4.00″. Any roof there that has stood through them has a prior storm for every one but the last.

Measured Detected, not measured

The page these figures come from

The terms this page uses and the guides that go further. Each is shown against its own example from the record.

Term Segregation of damages
The separating of damage a policy covers from damage it does not, and the burden, usually the policyholder's, of showing how much is which.
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.
Term Storm day
A calendar date on which hail, wind or tornado reports were filed, counted as one day however many reports it carries.
Term Hail size
The diameter of the largest hailstone at a place, reported in inches or by the named object on the spotter chart it was compared with.
Guide Which storm caused it: attributing damage across several storm days
Most roofs in the hail belt have been under more than one storm, and a claim is rarely argued against a blank record. It is argued against the other days: the one before the policy began, the one the last carrier paid, the one nobody noticed. This guide sets out what the law asks when storms compete for the same damage, how an appraisal panel reads the record, and why the calendar has to be on the table before the argument starts.

Sources

The primary references. Each opens on the agency's own site.

Before you run an address

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.

Find the storm days

The next step

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.

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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.