How to read the storm record, and how the report reads it.
The guides
In reading order. Each names who it is written for and how long it takes at an unhurried pace.
-
7 min
For homeowners, roofing contractors and public adjusters, among others
How to read a hail report: what each figure meansA hail report is a list of records with figures attached, and every figure on it came from somewhere in particular. This guide walks the document in the order a reader takes it: the date and the window searched, a measured size beside a detected one, the distance and bearing from the address, the count of independent sources, and the line at the end that says what the report does not claim.
Revised 23 Aug 2026
-
8 min
For public adjusters, independent adjusters and roofing contractors, among others
Measured and detected: radar hail sizes against spotter reportsThe record keeps a stone measured on the ground apart from a size computed from radar, because a court will ask which is which. This guide names the kinds of evidence as the report names them, states what a radar-derived size can and cannot say, explains why a measurement is drawn as a filled mark and a detection as a hollow one, and shows how to read the two on the same day.
Revised 23 Aug 2026
-
8 min
For attorneys, public adjusters and independent adjusters, among others
Automated weather reports in court: what survives a challengeTwo 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.
Revised 23 Aug 2026
-
8 min
For public adjusters, independent adjusters and attorneys, among others
How a date of loss is established, and how it is contestedA 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.
Revised 23 Aug 2026
-
8 min
For public adjusters, independent adjusters and attorneys, among others
Which storm caused it: attributing damage across several storm daysMost 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.
Revised 23 Aug 2026
-
8 min
For public adjusters, attorneys and forensic meteorologists, among others
NOAA's Storm Events database, explainedThe Storm Events database is the reviewed record of severe weather in the United States, kept by the National Centers for Environmental Information from the entries each forecast office prepares under a written directive. This guide states what is in it, how a hail entry is made, why it arrives a season after the storm and can change after that, what it does not hold, and how to read it beside the preliminary log and the local storm report an entry began as.
Revised 23 Aug 2026
-
6 min
For public adjusters, independent adjusters and roofing contractors, among others
How far away a hail report can be and still countA 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.
Revised 23 Aug 2026
The glossary
The words the report uses, each defined, each with how it appears in the document and a live example from the record. Open the glossary.
The guides explain the record. The report is what cites it.
Everything here is explanation: what the record is, how it is read, and what a figure in it can establish. 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.