Missing shingles after a storm: how urgent?

Photograph it before you do anything else

Before a tarp goes on, before anyone climbs up, take photographs from the ground on every side of the house, with something in frame that establishes scale and location. Photograph the debris in the yard. Photograph the date on your phone if you can. If you can safely see the roof from an upstairs window or a neighbour's garden, photograph the affected slope.

This takes five minutes and it is the difference between a straightforward claim and an argument about whether the damage predated the storm. Nobody can reconstruct it afterward.

Then check the attic with a torch, looking for daylight and for wet sheathing, and check ceilings on the top floor.

What counts as urgent

Exposed roof deck with rain in the forecast is urgent. Underlayment is a secondary water barrier and it is not designed to be the primary one for long, but bare wood is not a water barrier at all.

Also urgent: a lifted section that is flapping, because wind will progressively peel it and turn a small area into a large one; damage around a chimney or a wall intersection, where the flashing may have moved; and any interior water already showing.

Less urgent: missing ridge caps with the field intact, a handful of tabs lost from the middle of a slope with underlayment visible and sound, and granule loss that looks dramatic but has not exposed the mat. These need repair and they do not need it tonight.

Temporary cover, done properly

A tarp is a legitimate emergency measure and a badly installed one causes its own leaks. It needs to run from above the damaged area over the ridge, so water cannot run under the upper edge, and it needs to be fastened in a way that does not create dozens of new nail holes in sound roofing. Most insurers expect reasonable emergency mitigation and will consider its cost part of the claim, so keep the receipt.

If the roof is steep, wet, or high, this is not a homeowner task. Falls from roofs after storms are common and the tarp is not worth it.

The people who arrive uninvited

After a significant storm, crews will canvass the neighbourhood. Some are legitimate local contractors with more work than usual. Others are transient operations that will take a deposit, do fast work, and be unreachable when the workmanship fails.

A few checks cost nothing. Verify the license at the state's own record rather than from a card or a truck door; this site links each state's official lookup on every state page. Ask for a local physical address, not a post office box in another state. Refuse to sign anything on the doorstep, particularly a document that assigns your insurance benefits to the contractor, which is a legal transfer and not a formality. Decline any offer to cover or absorb your deductible, which is not a discount and is fraud in most states.

Take the time to get a second opinion. A roof that is genuinely damaged today will still be damaged next week, and the pressure to decide immediately is the tell.

Whether to claim at all

That is a separate decision with its own arithmetic, and it depends on your deductible, the scale of the damage, and your claim history. Our page on filing a storm claim or paying out of pocket sets out how to think about it. The one thing to do regardless is document now, because you can decide later and you cannot photograph later.

What this site publishes

The labor figure above is computed from published wage data times the stated hours and covers labor only, with no materials, tarps, disposal, or access equipment. We publish no project prices and reproduce no third-party cost tables. Contractors on record appear alphabetically, never by any commercial relationship, and this site never sells a placement in a storm-affected area or anywhere else.