Proof of loss
Definition
- Related pages
- 5
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
A proof of loss is the policyholder's formal, usually sworn, statement of the claim: the date and cause of the loss, the property involved, the interest of the insured and of anyone else, other insurance, and the amount claimed. The standard fire policy requires it within a fixed time after the loss unless the insurer extends the time in writing, and many state statutes set the insurer's deadline to act from the day a complete proof arrives. It is the document that turns a notice into a claim.
Everything on the form is an assertion the policyholder is signing to, and the date and cause are the assertions most often tested. A proof that names a date the storm record does not support, or names hail where the record near the property holds only wind, invites the question it was meant to close. The weather exhibits that accompany a proof exist to make the date and the cause the easiest parts to accept.
The form is a statement about the policyholder's loss, and no weather record can make that statement for them. What the record can do is sit beside it: a compiled, cited account of which storms are on record near the property, and when, with its own method stated, so that the proof's date rests on something other than the memory of the person signing it.
In the report
How the document prints it
The report is built to be attached to a proof of loss, which is why it carries the things a reviewer checks first: the address as located, the period searched, the search radius, a finding for each family of weather with its confidence stated, and a numbered record table in which every row names its date, its measurement, its distance and bearing from the address and its source with a citation number. The statement of compilation at the end says what the document is, that the records were reproduced as published, and that no opinion is offered on cause, extent or cost, which is the scope a reviewer can accept without argument. The fingerprint lets the reviewer confirm the copy attached is the one issued.
From the record
23 Aug 2026
A date a proof could name
- Hail reports on the day
- 40
- Independent sources
- 2
- Largest measured on the ground
- 1.75″
- States filed under
- 14
On 23 August 2026, the most recent day hail reached the severe criterion of 1.00″, the record holds 40 hail reports carried by 2 independent sources across 14 states. A proof of loss naming that date near a place in its footprint states a date the record can stand behind.
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
Public adjuster
A licensed adjuster retained by the policyholder, paid a share of the recovery, who prepares and negotiates the claim against the insurer.
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Term
Independent source
A record-keeping route by which a storm reached the archive, counted once however many rows it produced, so that agreement between routes can be measured.
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Guide
Automated weather reports in court: what survives a challenge
Two Florida courts excluded wind figures taken from commercial weather products because nobody could verify how they were made. This guide states what those rulings turned on, what Rule 702 asks of a figure and of the person citing it, what independent corroboration means as a count, and what a report has to say about itself to be cited.
Sources
The primary references. Each opens on the agency's own site.
- 01 New York Insurance Law, section 3404, standard fire insurance policy
- 02 Minnesota Statutes, section 65A.01, Minnesota standard fire insurance policy
- 03 Texas Insurance Code, chapter 542, processing and settlement of claims
- 04 44 CFR part 61, appendix A, Standard Flood Insurance Policy
- 05 NAIC Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act (Model 900)
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.