Roof Inspection After Wind or Snow: A Ground-Level Checklist
A storm’s damage to a roof can be read from the ground, and the part that cannot be read from the ground is the part nobody should climb up to look at. The order that works is hazards first, then the covering and its details, then the underside, then the record. What decides the next step is not the count of missing shingles. It is two questions: has water reached the inside, and has anything about the building changed shape?
Before you walk the property
A storm leaves hazards that outrank the roof. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is direct about the first of them: never touch a fallen power line, and call the power company to report one. Do not drive through standing water where downed lines lie in it. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety gives the household version of the same rule — assume every line is live, report downed lines, fire or gas leaks to the local utility, and do not enter a damaged building unless local officials have said it is safe.
Trees come second, and Washington’s own extension service documents the risk. Washington State University’s Pacific Northwest Gardener’s Handbook states that in western Washington, windstorms are a common source of damage to trees, capable of breaking tops and branches or, in extreme circumstances, blowing down large patches of them — and that snow and ice build weight on the tops and branches and cause breakage too. Look up before walking under anything, and treat a limb resting on a service line as the utility’s question rather than yours.
What the forecast already told you
The words the National Weather Service uses are thresholds, not adjectives, and the Spokane office publishes its own. For the inland valleys it issues a wind advisory at sustained winds of 30 to 39 mph or gusts of 45 to 57 mph, and a high wind warning at sustained winds of 40 mph or higher or gusts of 58 mph or higher, with higher figures for mountain locations. The insurance institute says how little that can take: “Even winds of just 60 miles per hour can damage older roofs.”
That is enough to tell a routine look from a document-everything pass, and the storm itself becomes a matter of public record. The Spokane office takes reports through an online form, by telephone at 1-800-483-4532 or by email, and what it collects joins the storm record it publishes. The roof-survey practices the institute publishes for professionals open with pre-inspection research into exactly that material — the storm reports of the National Weather Service, the National Centers for Environmental Information and the Storm Prediction Center. A dated photograph of your roof is worth more when the office’s measured gust from the same afternoon sits beside it.
The ground-level pass
| What you are looking at | What counts as a change |
|---|---|
| The covering, from the ground or through an upstairs window | Missing, cracked or displaced shingles, lifted or creased tabs, a bare patch. The roofing association’s own instruction is to make the first look from the ground or through upstairs windows, with binoculars, and it states plainly that property owners should never climb onto a roof. |
| The details | Anything changed at the points the association calls most vulnerable: the flashings, where the roof meets a sidewall, and around skylights, vent pipes and chimneys — which is also where it says leaks begin. |
| The edge and the gutters | Hail dents in gutters and downspouts; shingle debris in the yard, which the insurance institute warns may be a neighbour’s rather than yours; and, at the next rain, water where the gutter should be carrying it away, which is its own diagnosis. |
| The underside | Staining, damp timber or other signs of a leak on the underside of the deck, seen from the attic where it is safely reachable. The roofing association’s instruction is to inspect the underside of the deck from the attic and to look hardest at the flashings, which it calls the most vulnerable points. Water spots or stains on a ceiling, and standing water in an attic, are the two interior signs the institute tells households to record. |
Two cautions belong with the attic row. The Building America Solution Center’s pre-retrofit assessment, written for crews who do enter attics, lists the conditions that stop the work: vermiculite insulation, which may contain asbestos and must be tested before attic work begins, with the state health department the authority to ask; active knob-and-tube wiring, which the house must be rewired of before work in the attic starts; a boarded attic floor, which may be carrying a structural load; and any visible mold, which goes to a remediation professional.
The household rule is narrower still. If the hatch is not easy and safe to reach, if the ceiling above you is sagging, or if getting in means walking a boarded floor over loaded joists, stay out and put the question to someone qualified.
When snow is on the roof
The federal snow-load guidance is blunt about the arithmetic most people attempt. One foot of snow on the ground does not necessarily equal one foot of snow on the roof, it states, and it adds that weighing ground snow and assuming the roof carries the same load is incorrect. Depth also varies across a single roof: the guide’s own illustration of a house puts the deeper drifts in the valleys and around the chimney, the dormer, the porch roof and the skylight.
What can be observed is the building, not the load. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists these warning signs of an overstressed roof: doors or windows that can no longer be opened or closed, popping, cracking and creaking noises, a sagging roof deck or sagging roof members, cracked or split wood members, cracks in walls or masonry, severe roof leaks, and water standing where a low-slope roof should drain. Its instruction is unambiguous — if any of those appear, evacuate the building promptly and contact a local building authority or a qualified design professional, such as a professional engineer, for a structural inspection. Two lines on that list exist for commercial buildings rather than houses: sprinkler heads that deflect below a suspended ceiling, and ceiling tiles or boards dropping out of a grid.
The agency’s wider position is worth carrying too. Most buildings are not at risk from snow, it says, and more often than not, attempting to remove snow from a roof is more hazardous than leaving it. Where removal is judged necessary, the guide assigns the work to a licensed, insured roofing contractor with experience in it, and it stops the work outright wherever collapse is a concern. This page publishes no removal method and no way to judge the load from the ground, because no responsible authority publishes one for a household to use.
Two regional notes belong here. The agency names the Pacific Northwest as an exception to its own observation that western snow is lighter and less dense than snow in the east — the wetter, heavier case. And snow and ice load the trees at the same time as the roof, which is where the first section’s hazard rule returns.
The record
The value of the pass is the file it leaves. The insurance institute’s advice after a storm is to photograph and video the damage, to look for missing shingles and shingle debris, and to check the ceiling and the attic for water. Washington’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner puts the same instruction in claims terms: be ready to provide receipts and photographs to prove the loss, and keep copies of everything. It also names what belongs on file before a loss ever happens — photographs or video of the outside of the home from several places, kept somewhere other than the house.
Three of its statements are worth knowing before the first call. An insurer must tell you it received your claim within ten business days, and must finish investigating within thirty days of receiving it unless it can reasonably show why not. You keep the right to select your own contractor. And if a contractor asks you to sign an assignment of benefits, the office’s caution is that the form can let the contractor negotiate and settle the claim with the insurer without your approval.
Write down what the pass itself cannot show: the date, the weather of the days before, what you saw and where you stood to see it, and what has changed since your last look.
Where this stops, and who to call
| What you have | Who owns it |
|---|---|
| A fallen or damaged service line, or a line touching a fence, a vehicle or a tree | The utility, and 911 if anyone is in danger. Never touch a fallen line. |
| Doors or windows that no longer close, creaking or popping, a sagging deck or ceiling, new cracks in walls | Evacuate first, then a local building authority or a qualified design professional. |
| Missing shingles, damaged flashing, or a wet deck after rain | A roofing contractor: the roofing association’s advice is to contact one for a full assessment once damage is visible. Washington makes the registration check free and public. |
| A mark on a ceiling, or dampness that appears with the weather | The record first, because a leak and condensation are different jobs. |
| Ice held at the roof edge or standing in the gutter | Its own question, with its own limits on what may be done. |
| A tree leaning over the roof, or limbs near a service line | A professional’s assessment: the roofing association says trees that may need to be removed belong to someone qualified, and anything near a line belongs to the utility. |
Next step
Look again after the next rain. Most covering failures announce themselves when water arrives rather than when the wind does, and a second photograph taken from the same place turns two observations into evidence. The roofing association’s recommendation is a full examination of the system in spring and again in the fall, and the spring checklist carries that work as a list.
What none of it changes is the boundary. You can photograph, record and compare from the ground all year — and the moment a check requires standing on the covering, it becomes someone else’s job.