Hail, siding, and the fight that is really about matching

Hail season here runs March through June. Significant hail reports in the National Weather Service's St. Louis area climatology rose from about ten a year in the 1960s to nearly twenty a year by the 1990s, with 74 reports in 2003 and 65 in 2004. Roughly 73 percent of significant hail, meaning two inches or more, falls between March and June.

Published record: 1955 to 2004, which is where that published record ends. There is no newer published climatology for this area, so we are not going to invent a recent figure.

There is no hail rating for siding

There is no hail rating for siding of the kind roofing has. The Class 1 to 4 impact classification everyone quotes is a roofing standard. Wall cladding has no consumer-facing equivalent. So when a salesman tells you a siding product is "Class 4 rated," they are quoting a roofing classification at you. What siding is actually tested to is a wind-load pressure requirement and an impact test method, verified through a certification programme — real standards, but not a consumer-facing hail grade, and not something you can compare across materials on a label.

The only head-to-head figures published are manufacturer-sponsored, from a 2017 test at Texas Tech: engineered wood lap undamaged by 1.75 inch hail at 81 mph, fiber cement dented by 1.75 inch hail at 74 mph, vinyl fractured by 1.25 inch hail at 57 mph. Read them knowing who paid for them.

What hail actually does, material by material

• Vinyl cracks. Cracked vinyl is functional damage and it is hard for an adjuster to call cosmetic. But whether it cracks depends heavily on the temperature at impact, because PVC gets brittle in the cold — the same hailstone can leave a January wall shattered and an August wall unmarked.
• Aluminium and steel dent, and dents are the most commonly denied category of siding damage because they are argued as cosmetic. The panel still sheds water, which is exactly the argument.
• Fiber cement chips and cracks, usually at edges and fastener lines.
• Engineered wood performed best in the only published head-to-head test, with the caveat above about who paid for it.

The real fight is matching, and Missouri law on it comes from here

The real fight on a siding hail claim is almost never whether there is damage. It is matching. Alessi v. Mid-Century Insurance, decided by the Missouri Court of Appeals in 2015, came out of a St. Charles house where hail hit only the north elevation and the siding was no longer manufactured. The court held that equivalent construction in a replacement-cost policy means materials both equal in value and virtually identical, and that whether comparable siding exists, and whether a mismatched house equals a matching one, are questions of fact for a jury. Missouri has no matching regulation; the protection comes from that case law reading the policy, not from a statute.

What to do after a storm

1. Photograph it before anyone touches it, including the ground-level debris and the date on your phone.
2. Check the north and west elevations specifically. Hail is directional. Damage on one side and none on the other is normal and is exactly the fact pattern that produces a matching dispute.
3. Find out what your siding actually is — manufacturer, line and colour — before you talk to the adjuster. If it is discontinued, that is the single most important fact in the claim.
4. Do not sign anything that assigns your claim. A contractor who wants your insurance benefits assigned to them before an adjuster has been out is running a different business from the one you think.
5. Get the windows looked at too. Hail cracks glass and damages sashes and screens, and window damage on a siding claim is routinely missed simply because nobody looked up.

Sources: weather.gov · lpcorp.com · propertyinsurancelawobserver.com · irmi.com