How to Find the Date Hail Hit Your House

How do I look up hail reports for my county?

Open the Storm Events Database, choose your county, pick Hail as the event type, enter a start date and an end date, and select Search. The results table lists each report with its town, date, time and approximate hail size. Select a row to open the full event page. (NOAA’s older address, ncdc.noaa.gov/stormevents, forwards to this site.)

1. On the database home page, select Start Search. This opens the search page.
2. Choose your county. On the Search by Map tab, type a zip code, city or address into the box above the map and pick a suggestion; the county appears under Selected Areas. Or open the Search by State/County tab, pick your state under States/Areas, then your county under Counties.
3. Under Event Types, type Hail and select it. A Hail Filter menu then lets you set a minimum size, from 0.50 in. and larger up to 4.00 in. and larger. Leave it on All the first time.
4. Enter a Start Date and an End Date as MM/DD/YYYY. Both are required. Cover every date the storm could have been, such as the whole season.
5. Select Search. The page shows a results summary and a table with these columns: Location, County/Zone, State/Region, Start Date/Time, Type, Magnitude, Fatalities, Injuries, Property Damage and Crop Damage. For hail, Magnitude is the reported size in inches.
6. Select any row to open its event page. It shows the start and end location with latitude and longitude, the report source, the National Weather Service office, and the event and episode narratives.
7. To keep a copy of the table, use Download Table CSV. NOAA says that to obtain a certified report you contact ncei.orders@noaa.gov with the search results you want certified.

For example, one row of a search for hail in a county in Indiana reads: CARMEL, HAMILTON CO., INDIANA, 03/28/2020 13:27 EST-5, Hail, 1.00 in. Its event page gives the start location as 0.53W CARMEL at 39.98/-86.14, the report source as Public, and the National Weather Service office as IND. The time ends in a time-zone code, and NOAA’s FAQ says storm data from 1993 onward use the time zone where the event occurred. In the Marion County, Indiana results we searched for 2015 and 2016, rows dated in June and July carry the standard-time label EST-5, so a listed time may differ by an hour from the daylight clock time. Events take about 3 months to appear, and the FAQ says the database is updated within 75 to 90 days after the end of a data month.

What does the NOAA record show, and what does it leave out?

The record shows reports the National Weather Service received and entered: a county, a nearby place and coordinates, a date and time, and an approximate hail size. It does not show whether hail fell on your street or your roof, or what damage it did there.

What it shows

• A county. The search page says smaller events, including hail, are collected by county, and each event page is limited to one county or zone.
• A point. The FAQ says a location is entered either as a distance and direction from a known town or as a latitude and longitude pair.
• A date and time. Each row carries a start date, a time and a time-zone code.
• An approximate size. The FAQ has a section titled Approximate Hail Size. It matches inches to everyday objects, for example 0.75 inch to a penny and 1.00 inch to a quarter.

What it leaves out

• Your roof. A report describes a place and a time, not your house. The Property Damage column is described on the search page as a broad estimate.
• Every storm. The FAQ says only weather intense enough to cause injuries, significant property damage or disruption to commerce, or that is otherwise unusual and rare, is included. A date with no row does not by itself show that no hail fell near your home.
• Confirmed facts. The FAQ says reports come from sources such as emergency management officials, law enforcement, trained storm spotters, National Weather Service damage surveys and the general public, among others. Its disclaimer states: “An effort is made to use the best available information, but because of time and resource constraints, information from these sources may be unverified by the NWS.” It adds that the NWS does not guarantee the accuracy or validity of the information.

What are National Weather Service local storm reports?

A local storm report is a short message from a National Weather Service office saying what was reported and where, such as hail of a stated size near a town. The Storm Prediction Center collects them into one page for each day, and you open a day’s page by entering its date.

1. Open the Storm Prediction Center’s storm reports page.
2. Under Past Storm Reports, enter the date as YYMMDD and select Get Data. March 28, 2020 is 200328. Not every date has a page. When there is none, the site says the page could not be found; that is what we got for every date we tried before June 1999, and for December 31, 1999 and January 1, 2000.
3. Find the Hail Reports table. Each row gives a time, a size, a place, a county, a state, coordinates and a comment that ends with the three letters of the reporting NWS office. Notes under the tables give the units. On the March 28, 2020 page they read “All Times UTC” and “Hail Sizes in 1/100 of an Inch (175 = 1.75")”, so a time there is UTC, not your local time, and a size of 100 means 1.00 inch and 175 means 1.75 inches. A row on that page reads 1830 100 2 WNW CARMEL HAMILTON IN: 18:30 UTC, 1.00 inch. Check the notes on the page you open; the pages we opened for dates from June 1, 1999 to June 5, 2000 show the UTC note but no hail-size note. A CSV link is beside the table.

Each daily page covers a window that does not match the calendar day. The SPC FAQ says: “The Storm Reports page is organized based on reports received from 1200 UTC to 1159 UTC the next day.” A storm in the early hours of the morning, local time, is therefore listed under the previous date. On a daily page, a time from 0000 to 1159 falls on the next date in UTC. The same FAQ says the list is automatically collected from reports sent by local NWS offices, that a report which was never sent or arrived more than 10 days after the event does not appear, and: “Our storm reports list is preliminary and likely does not contain all severe weather reports for any particular event.” It points to the Storm Events Database for final data.

Each NWS office also posts the reports it issued recently on its page of the National Weather Service website. For older dates, use the daily pages or the Storm Events Database. The SPC FAQ explains the latitude and longitude format and the three-letter office codes.

What other dated records might I already have?

Photos, messages, invoices and notes all carry dates. Each is a record of when someone looked or acted, which may differ from the day the hail fell. Gather the ones you have and write down the date each one carries, so you can set them beside the hail reports for your county.

• Photos. Look at the date and time your photo app lists for each picture, and keep the original files.
• Neighbors’ repairs. A neighbor who had work done after the same storm may have a dated invoice or permit.
• A contractor’s inspection note. If a contractor has looked at your roof, ask for a dated written note of what they saw. It records what they saw on the day they looked. Otter Quotes does not offer inspections.
• Your insurer’s file. If you have already contacted your insurer, ask which date it has on file.

What if I noticed the damage weeks or months later?

Then more than one storm date may be possible. List the hail reports for your county across the whole window, then set your dated records beside them. You end up with a timeline of storm dates and record dates that you can keep with your other papers.

Policies set their own notice and filing rules, and which date a claim uses is a question for your policy and your insurer. This guide states no deadline. Read your policy or ask your insurer.

Where Otter Quotes fits

Otter Quotes does not find or confirm a date of loss, and we do not work with your insurance company. Once you have a scope of work, we send it to multiple contractors. Every contractor bids on the same scope and the same measurements. You compare the bids online, next to reviews and licensing information, and sign online without a salesperson in your home. We are not a contractor, we do not sell upgrades, and we do not offer inspections. Contractors pay Otter Quotes a fee on the accepted bid.