What Are Common Types of Storm Damage to Homes?
Roof and siding wind damage, hail dents, fallen trees, and wind-driven rain are most common. Most are covered.
Free to compare
Wind and hail usually come with their own deductible, separate from your regular one, and it often works as a percentage of your dwelling coverage rather than a flat dollar amount. On a house insured for $300,000 with a 2% wind deductible, that's $6,000 out of pocket before coverage starts. Your declarations page shows whether this applies and what the percentage is. In hurricane-prone states, a separate hurricane deductible may apply instead, triggered by official storm naming rather than wind speed alone.
A percentage deductible changes the math on whether a claim makes sense, and it's worth knowing before the next storm, not after. If your policy carries a 2% wind deductible on a $300,000 house, that's $6,000 you'd cover yourself. Comparing what different insurers charge for that coverage, and how their deductibles are structured, shows where you'd actually stand.
What should you do right after a storm hits your house
Take photos before you touch anything. Walk the outside of the house and get the roof, siding, gutters, windows, and any fallen branches or trees. If it's safe to get into the attic, check for water stains or daylight coming through the roof deck. These photos matter more than you'd think once an adjuster is working from a report instead of standing in your yard.
Cover what you can to stop more damage, a tarp over a hole in the roof, plastic over a broken window. Most policies require this and call it protecting the property from further loss. Keep the receipts for the tarp, the plywood, whatever you bought. That cost usually gets reimbursed as part of the claim, separate from the main repair.
Call your insurer or start the claim online as soon as you reasonably can. Storm claims move in waves after a big event, and the house that gets inspected first usually gets repaired first. If the damage affects a shared structure, like a fence between properties or a tree that fell from a neighbor's yard onto yours, say so when you file. It can affect whose policy responds.
Don't start permanent repairs before the adjuster has seen the damage, beyond the emergency tarping. If a contractor shows up at your door before you've filed anything and offers to handle the whole claim for you, slow down. Get your own estimate too, and compare it against whatever the insurer's adjuster comes back with. If the two numbers are far apart, you can ask for a second inspection or bring in a public adjuster, someone hired by you rather than the insurer, to represent your side. That costs a percentage of the settlement, so it's worth it mainly when the gap is large.
What kinds of storm damage does a standard policy not cover
Flooding is the big one. If storm surge or rising water from heavy rain gets into the house, a standard homeowners policy doesn't pay for that. Flood coverage comes from a separate policy, and in a lot of hurricane-prone areas it's worth having even if the lender doesn't require it. Wind-driven rain that comes in through a hole the wind made in the roof is usually covered. Water that rises up from the ground is not. Adjusters look closely at which one actually happened, and it affects which policy, if either, pays.
Maintenance issues that a storm exposes are another gap. If a roof was already worn down and a storm finishes it off, the insurer may argue the damage was gradual wear, not sudden storm damage, and pay less than you'd expect or deny the claim. This is part of why photos and any record of the roof's condition before the storm matter. A roof that was in decent shape before the storm and clearly damaged after it is a much easier claim than one with a history of leaks.
Damage to things outside the house, like a detached fence, a shed, or landscaping, is often covered but under a different part of the policy with its own limits, usually lower than what applies to the house itself. A tree that falls and damages the house is typically covered, but if that same tree falls in the yard and doesn't hit anything, most policies won't pay to remove it. Some policies make a narrow exception if the tree was blocking a driveway or a wheelchair ramp. The declarations page or the policy booklet spells out these smaller sub-limits, and they're easy to miss until a claim runs into one.
Power outages and food spoilage sit in a gray area too. Some policies include a small amount of coverage for food lost when the power goes out for an extended stretch, others don't. If a storm knocks out power for days and the freezer thaws, whether that's covered depends on the policy, not on how bad the storm was. Checking this ahead of time, rather than finding out while filing, is one of the clearer reasons to read through the policy before storm season rather than after the storm has already hit.
Before the next storm
Find your wind or hurricane deductible on your declarations page and work out what it means in dollars for your house. Knowing that number now, not during a claim, is what makes the next storm less of a surprise.
