Creased and Missing Shingles: What Wind Does to a Roof

1. Missing Shingles

The whole shingle, or a tab of it, is gone. You see bare underlayment, or the black top of the shingle below, in a rectangle. Missing shingles are most common at the rakes and ridges, along the eaves, and on the slopes that faced the storm. The pieces usually end up in the yard or the gutter.

2. Torn Shingles

Part of the tab is ripped away and part is still nailed down. The tear is ragged and usually runs up toward the nails. A fresh tear shows black asphalt along the edge. An old one has weathered gray.

3. Creased Shingles

This is the one that matters. In a strong gust the tab lifts, folds back over itself, and then drops. The fold leaves a horizontal line across the shingle, usually just above the seal strip. From the yard you cannot see it. On the roof you can, and you can feel it.

What a crease looks like up close:

• A straight line across the tab, parallel to the bottom edge, where the granules are scuffed or cracked in a row.
• The mat is broken along the line. Lift the tab gently and it folds at the crease like a hinge. A healthy shingle flexes. A creased one bends at one spot.
• The seal is broken. The adhesive strip that held that tab to the shingle below has let go. A shingle that is creased is a shingle that is unsealed.
• It runs in a pattern. Creases show up on the same courses across a slope, heaviest on the slopes and edges that faced the wind.

A creased shingle that lies flat is still damaged. The next wind lifts it at the broken hinge, and the next after that tears it off. Water gets under an unsealed tab long before it blows away.

4. Lifted and Unsealed Shingles

Sometimes wind breaks the seal without leaving a crease. The tab lifts freely when you raise it by hand instead of resisting. Shingles are made to reseal in warm sun, and a tab that broke loose in April can be stuck down again by June. Whether an unsealed tab counts as storm damage depends on what else is on that slope and whether it resealed. We photograph it, say what it is, and do not call it more than it is.

5. What Is Not Wind Damage

• Age. Old shingles curl at the corners, crack in a fine pattern and lose granules across whole slopes. Wear is everywhere and gradual. Wind is specific: this course, this edge, this slope. See what granule loss looks like.
• Poor nailing. Shingles nailed too high, above the nail line, blow off in ordinary wind because the nails are not holding the course below. The nail holes show where they were. It is a real roof problem. It is an installation problem, not a storm.
• Thermal cracking. Shingles can crack as they age and shrink. The cracks run in any direction and are not lined up above the seal strip.

A roof can have wind damage and old age at once. One does not cancel the other. The crease on a 15-year-old shingle is still a crease.

6. How We Inspect for Wind

We walk every slope. We lift tabs by hand on each slope direction, mark each crease and tear in chalk, and photograph it from far, middle and close with something in the picture for scale. Missing shingles are photographed where they were and, when we can find them, where they landed. We note the direction the damage faces and match it to the public storm reports for the date. Then the ridge, the rakes, the soft metals and anything on the ground that moved.

Please do not go up to check your own roof. Wind-damaged tabs are loose, and a slope with lifted shingles is a slope that is easy to slide on.

7. The Claim

Most homeowner policies cover wind damage. Where a wind claim goes thin is the same place a hail claim does: the carrier's estimate pays to replace the shingles that are plainly gone and leaves the creased ones, or pays a repair on a roof whose shingle can no longer be matched.

Both get the same answer from us. Every creased shingle is in the proof-of-damage report with its photo number. The scope is written line by line in the same software carriers use. We meet the adjuster on the roof and lift the tabs with them. And when a repair would not match the rest of the roof, Ohio's matching rule goes in the file:

That rule is where the name MATCHWORK™ comes from. The claim is yours. The proof is our job, and you get a copy of everything we send.

Sources: Haag Engineering, the test square method; Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association, Residential Asphalt Roofing Manual; Ohio Administrative Code rule 3901-1-54.