A storm rarely announces what it has done to a roof. You may wake to a slate on the lawn, or to nothing at all, and find a stain on the landing ceiling three weeks later. Wind lifts ridge tiles, strips flashings, flexes loose slates until their nails give way and drives rain sideways into places a roof was never built to keep dry. A post-storm inspection is the orderly way to find all of it while the cause is still fresh. It has two jobs. The first is practical: to spot the damage that will turn into a leak, and to make the roof safe before the next band of weather arrives. The second is evidential: to record what happened, when, and in what condition the roof was before, so that a claim has something solid behind it. An inspection covers the roof from the ground, from the loft and on the roof itself, and there are clear things to do, and not to do, in the first few days after the wind drops.
First steps in the hours after the wind drops
Safety comes before diagnosis. If a chimney pot has shifted, a section of ridge is hanging, or a gutter is dragging loose from the wall, keep people and cars away from the footprint beneath it. Debris on a roof can fall hours after a gust, when the wind has long since gone.
Walk round the outside of the house on the ground and look up. A pair of binoculars helps more than a ladder ever will. You are looking for gaps in the pattern of the roof, bright patches where a slate or tile has gone, and anything that does not sit straight, for instance a sagging ridge, lead hanging loose at a stack, or a fascia board standing proud at its corner. Check the lawn and the paths for fragments. Broken slate and pieces of tile on the ground are a direct clue to where on the roof they came from, and the pattern of where they landed often shows the direction the wind was blowing.
Indoors, go through every upstairs ceiling and look for new staining, bubbling paint or drips. Then open the loft hatch and look for daylight, wet insulation or water running down the timbers. Our guide to inspecting a roof from the loft explains what each sign means.
If water is coming in, catch it in a bucket and move belongings away from it. For us a leak comes first: we prioritise storm damage and secure the roof before anything else, because every extra hour of wet weather spreads harm into ceilings, wiring and timber. A temporary cover or a patch is often enough to hold until a proper repair, and it should be photographed before and after.
Do not climb onto a wet roof to look for yourself. Slate is slippery, old timbers can be weaker than they appear, and a fall from a first-floor eaves is serious. That work belongs to someone with the right access equipment.
What the inspection checks, area by area
A thorough post-storm inspection follows the roof from the top down, and it checks the parts that the wind attacks first.
Ridge, hips and verges
These are the exposed edges, and wind pressure is greatest there. Ridge and hip tiles can lift or slide, especially where old mortar has cracked and the bedding no longer grips. Along the verge beside a gable wall, tiles, slates and pointing can all be shaken loose. We look at what is holding each piece, and whether it is mortar alone or a mechanical fixing, since the standard for tiling expects bedded fittings to be mechanically fixed.
The open slope
On the main slopes we look for missing, slipped and cracked slates or tiles, and for the row of disturbance around any loss. A gust that takes one slate often loosens its neighbours. We also check for lifted tiles that have dropped back into place and look normal from below.
Chimneys, flashings and lead
A flashing is lead or another metal dressed across the line where roof meets masonry, and a gale can peel its edge away. Chimney stacks take the full force of a gale. We check the pots, the flaunching (the mortar cap that holds them), the pointing and the lead around the base.
Valleys, gutters and fascias
Valleys carry the water of two slopes, and a displaced slate can push debris into them. Gutters can be pulled out of line or packed with leaves and fragments that were torn from nearby trees. Fascias and soffits can lift at corners where they were already soft with age.
Flat roofs and outbuildings
Felt and single-ply membranes can be lifted at edges or punctured by flying objects. Garages, sheds and lean-tos are often the first things to give, and they are worth checking in the same visit.
Damage that stays hidden from the pavement
Some of the worst storm damage is invisible from the pavement. A slate can crack across its width without moving, and the crack opens only when rain finds it. Nails can pull partway out of battens, leaving slates held by friction. A ridge tile can rock on its bedding but stay in position until the next gust. Timber that has been shaken or lifted may show nothing until the water arrives.
This is the reason a post-storm inspection involves a proper survey and not just a quick glance. It also explains why the loft matters. Stains, wet insulation and daylight tell you where water is entering, even if the outside looks sound. Where a roof has been foamed on the inside, that evidence is hidden, and other methods are needed.
One of them is thermal imaging, which can show wet insulation and heat escaping through a damaged area from the camera's point of view. We explain its strengths and limits in our guide to thermal imaging roof surveys, which is worth reading before you commission one, because it works well on certain roofs but not on every one.
The other method is time. Some damage only becomes visible after the next heavy rain. For that reason, it is sensible to check the ceilings and the loft again after the next wet spell, and to tell your insurer promptly about any new signs, so the claim reflects what was found, not just what was seen on day one.
A roof that has had storm damage once is also more likely to have weak points elsewhere, since the same loose fixings and tired mortar that failed in one place are present across the rest of the roof. A good inspection looks at the whole roof and not just the spot where the slate landed.
How an inspection supports a claim
Insurers decide claims on evidence, and a roof inspection is one of the better kinds. Insurers commonly borrow the trade body's meaning of a storm, which counts gusts of at least 55mph. Ordinary policies may also exclude general wear and tear, so a leak through a poorly maintained roof can be refused. According to figures the Financial Conduct Authority supplied and Which? reported in November 2025, only 32% of storm-related claims made in 2024 resulted in a payout. That is not a reason to give up, but it is a reason to build a clear record.
What helps is plain. Write down the date and the weather, and keep any local forecast or weather report that matches. Take dated photographs of the damage from the ground, the loft and, where it is safe, the roof. Keep broken pieces if you can do so safely. Get a written report from a roofer that says what was found, where, and what in the roofer's view caused it. Keep every receipt for emergency work.
One Financial Ombudsman case study turned on local weather reports in place of a wind-speed reading. The ombudsman decided that wind had caused the tiles to come off, and observed that the policy's wear-and-tear wording covered accidental damage only. You can read the case study on the Ombudsman's site. It shows why a roofer's description of how the damage looks, such as a clean break at a nail line and not a long-term crumble, matters.
What we supply is the inspection, the photographs and a written report of the findings. No roofer can promise an outcome, and the claim is a matter between you and whoever issued the policy. Our page on roof photos before work explains how we document a roof before and after a repair.
Repair, cost and what happens after the inspection
The inspection ends with a decision, and the decision is nearly always one of three. The first is a make-safe: a temporary measure that stops water getting in. The second is a repair, which replaces what was lost and refixes what was loosened. The third, less common, is that the storm has revealed a roof that is close to the end of its life, so a bigger job beats repeated patching.
On cost, typical UK ranges reported by MyBuilder (2026) put storm-damage fixes at about £500 to £1,500 and a standard roof inspection at £150 to £250, with a thermal survey higher. Treat those as national figures for comparison. We give our own figure in writing before work starts, and only once the survey is complete. Scaffold, access and finding slate or tile to match move a storm repair up or down, and on an older Bath house the matching can cost as much as the labour. Lead lifted at a stack or valley adds time, because it must be dressed back or renewed.
If the house is listed, or sits in the stretch of Bath inside the conservation area, take care. Putting back what was lost is one thing and swapping materials is another, so ask B&NES planning before changing anything. Our own work follows the roof as it was built, which means the same slate, the same stone tile and lead where lead was.
Until the repair is done, keep an eye on the ceiling below the damaged area after each spell of rain and note any new stains with the date. For the repair itself, our page on storm damage roof repairs sets out how we approach it, and the hub for roof inspections explains the survey that comes first.
Finally, keep what you have. The photographs, the report and the receipts are the record of what happened to the roof, and they are useful again if you sell or if the next storm tests the same weak point.