Storms in central Texas don’t mess around. Twenty minutes of hail and wind can leave a trail of roof damage across a whole neighborhood, and then the sun comes back out and everything looks almost normal again. Which is actually the problem. Because “almost normal” from the street can hide a lot.
Getting storm damage repair handled correctly starts with what you do immediately after the weather clears. The sequence matters, especially if you’re planning to file an insurance claim. Here’s how to handle it.
First, Stay Off the Roof
Seriously. Don’t go up there.
Walk the perimeter of the house from the ground. You’re not doing a full inspection. You’re just looking for obvious things: missing shingles, debris on the surface, gutters that took a hit, dented metal caps or vents. Make a mental note of where things look off.
Then go inside and check your ceilings. Go into the attic if you have access and it’s safe. Fresh staining, water actively dripping, or daylight through the deck means the roof is breached and the clock is ticking before the next rain makes things worse. If any of that is happening, temporary protection needs to go up fast. Getting on a wet, possibly structurally compromised roof to investigate it yourself introduces a whole different kind of risk.
Document Everything Before You Touch Anything
Before cleanup starts. Before debris gets moved. Before anything.
Pull up your phone and shoot the whole thing. Wide shots of the full roof from each corner of the house. Close-ups of visible damage. Photos of the gutters, the fascia, any interior staining you found. Turn on timestamps if they aren’t already on.
If you have photos from before the storm sitting in your camera roll, save those separately. That before-and-after record is worth a lot during a claims process where an adjuster is trying to figure out what’s storm damage and what was already there. The more you document before anything moves, the less room there is for that conversation to go sideways.
Call Your Contractor Before You Call Insurance
Most people do this backwards. They call insurance first, an adjuster comes out, and whatever that adjuster documents becomes the starting point for the whole claim.
The issue is that general property adjusters and roofing contractors are looking at the same damage with very different sets of eyes. Hail impact on shingles has specific signatures. Wind damage to the adhesive seal under shingle edges isn’t always visible unless you know exactly where to look. A contractor who’s been doing this work for years in the San Antonio and Austin area will catch things a general adjuster sometimes misses.
Getting a contractor’s written assessment before you call insurance means you’re bringing documentation to that conversation instead of walking in empty-handed. If the adjuster’s number comes back lower than what the contractor documented, you have something concrete to push back with.
Atrium Roofing has been doing post-storm assessments in San Antonio and Austin since 2016 and is RCAT licensed. They know what to document and how to document it in a way that holds up with insurance companies. Getting them out there quickly after a storm is usually the right first call.
The Out-of-Town Contractor Problem
After any major storm in this area, the neighborhood fills up. Trucks from out of state, crews going door to door, guys promising the whole thing will be covered by insurance before they’ve even looked at your policy.
Some of those contractors do perfectly decent work. But the pattern of collecting deposits, doing fast work, and being long gone before problems surface is well-documented in this industry, and it’s especially common in storm-heavy markets like central Texas. Verify a TDLR license number on the state’s website before you sign anything. Check reviews that go back more than a couple weeks. A contractor who’s been operating locally for years has something to lose if the work goes bad. A crew that blew through town for storm season doesn’t.
Working the Insurance Claim
File without sitting on it. Texas homeowner policies typically have deadlines on storm damage reporting.
When the adjuster visits, see if your contractor can be there at the same time. Walking the roof together usually produces a more complete assessment than two separate visits where neither party has context on what the other found. And if the settlement offer feels low relative to what your contractor documented, you can request a re-inspection or bring in a public adjuster. The first offer isn’t always final.