Dated photographs of each plane
Every face of the roof, with the marks shown in context and in close-up, so somebody who was not there can see the pattern rather than take a description on trust.
Storm & Hail Damage
Storm & Hail Damage Roof Repair in Stratford, NJ
Wind and hail leave different marks and both fade. Getting them photographed and dated early is worth more than any opinion offered about them later.
Wind and hail do not leave the same marks
Wind goes for the perimeter: it prises tabs upward and destroys the bond beneath them, so its signature collects along rakes and ridges and on whichever elevation faced the gusts. A good deal of that can be seen from the lawn. Hail is a surface event — scattered circular bruises on whatever planes were pointing upward, granules knocked loose, nothing actually torn open. Those bruises commonly stay watertight through a season or two, and that silence is the reason so many of them are never documented until the deadline for filing has quietly expired.
What the record contains
The soft metal check
Hail stones leave dents in gutters, vent caps and any aluminium on the building. Those dents date and size an event in a way a shingle surface cannot, and they are the first thing an adjuster looks for.
A written scope where there is damage
What is affected, what closing it involves and the quantities behind that, in the same itemised form as any other estimate from here.
A straight no where there is not
A high proportion of the roofs looked at the morning after a front simply turn out to be worn out. You will be told so plainly, and no scope is written up to dress ordinary wear in the costume of a storm.
Why an inflated claim costs you
Filing and losing eats several weeks and a little of the goodwill an insurer extends you, and the contractor who talked you into it loses neither. The cost people miss is the second one: the event is now on your file as declined, and that follows you into the next storm, the one that does genuine harm. Either way the photographs earn their keep, because whatever happens next gets compared against them.
Document it while the deadline is still open
Photographs and a dated write-up, whether or not anything comes of it.