What storm damage actually looks like from the ground
You don't need to climb anything to catch most monsoon damage. You need ten minutes, daylight, and a slow lap around the house. Binoculars help. A phone camera with the zoom maxed out works almost as well, and it saves the evidence while you're at it.
What you're looking for depends on what kind of roof you have.
On a tile roof
Tile damage announces itself in straight lines that stop being straight. Every course of tile on your roof runs in a clean row, so scan each row from one end to the other and note anything that breaks the pattern. A slipped tile drops out of line and shows a gap above it. A cracked tile shows a shadow line where there shouldn't be one. A microburst, which is a column of storm air that slams into the ground at 60 to 100 mph and spreads in every direction, tends to lift tile along one slope and leave the rest of the roof untouched, so give every side of the house its own look.
Check the ridge line too, the peak where the two slopes meet. Monsoon wind pops ridge caps loose, and a displaced cap is easy to spot against the sky. Then look at the valleys, the channels where two roof planes come together. After a storm they collect branches, palm fronds, and drifts of grit. Debris in a valley isn't damage by itself, but it dams the next storm's water and sends it sideways under the tile, so it goes on the fix-it list all the same.
One thing worth knowing: the tile is the armor, not the waterproofing. The layer that actually keeps water out of your house is the underlayment beneath the tile, and a storm that moved tile around has exposed it. The tile roof lifespan guide explains that two-layer system in full.
On a shingle roof
Shingle damage is easier to see because the wounds are darker than the surface around them. A missing shingle shows the black underlayment or the shingle below it. A creased shingle got folded back by wind and no longer lies flat, and even after it settles back down, the crease is a broken seal that leaks in wind-driven rain.
The other tell is on the ground, not the roof. Check the splash blocks and the dirt below your downspouts for piles of granules, the sandy mineral coating that gives a shingle its color. Some granule shedding is normal aging, but a heavy pile right after a storm means hail or wind-driven grit stripped the shingle's sun protection in one afternoon. Arizona sun goes to work on the exposed asphalt immediately, which is the fast-forward button on the aging process the shingle lifespan guide walks through.
On a foam roof
Flat foam roofs hide their damage, so the check is different. If you can see any part of the roof from a second-story window or a ladder at the roofline, you're looking for two things. The first is punctures, the divots and gouges hail and flying debris leave in the coating. The second is standing water. A foam roof sheds rain through scuppers, the drain openings in the parapet walls, and a storm that clogged them with debris leaves ponds behind. Water still sitting there 48 hours after the rain stopped means the drainage is blocked, and ponding water under summer sun is how foam roofs fail. The foam roof lifespan guide covers what the coating does and why it matters.
After a haboob
A haboob, the wall of dust that runs ahead of some monsoon storms, does damage people don't think to look for because no rain fell. The dust sandblasts granules off aged shingles, loads every valley and scupper with fine grit, and the wind gusting ahead of it lifts whatever was already loose. After a big one, run the same ground-level lap even if your yard stayed dry, and put clearing the drainage paths at the top of the list before the next storm arrives with actual water.
Inside the house: signs water got through
The surface can look fine and still have let water in, so the second half of the check happens inside.
Ceiling stains are the obvious one, the tan or brown rings that show up on drywall. Fresh stains feel damp and look darker at the center. Check the corners where walls meet ceilings, around light fixtures and ceiling fans, and inside closets, which people repaint less often and where old stains survive as evidence.
If you have attic access, a flashlight beats everything else. Dark streaks running down the underside of the roof deck, damp insulation, or a musty smell that wasn't there last month all say water is getting past the roof. So does daylight, anywhere you can see it through the deck.
Here's the part that surprises people: the stain almost never sits directly below the hole. Water gets through the roof at one point, runs along the underlayment or the framing until it finds a low spot, and drops onto the drywall there. A stain in the hallway can trace back to a flashing failure fifteen feet away over the patio. Finding the actual entry point is inspection work. Your job is just to record where the water showed up.
The first 48 hours
If a storm got through, here's the order of operations.
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Photograph everything from inside first. Ceiling stains, drips, wet drywall, anything that came through. Take the photos while the evidence is fresh, with your phone's date stamp intact. If water is actively dripping, get a bucket under it and a towel on the floor before you do anything else.
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Stay off the roof. A roof after a storm is wet, loaded with loose debris, and holding damage you can't see until you step on it. Most of the ladder-fall stories that reach us happen the morning after a storm, not during it. Everything up there can be documented by someone with fall protection and the experience to walk it safely.
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Document interior damage room by room. Wide shot of each affected room, close-ups of each stain or wet spot, and a note of the date and which storm. Ten extra minutes now pays for itself whether this becomes an insurance claim, a repair scope, or nothing at all.
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Book the inspection. A Courtesy Roof Inspection is free, and after a storm it answers the only question that matters: what failed, and is it a patch or the start of a bigger conversation. The written photo report is yours to keep no matter what you decide to do next.
What's urgent and what can wait
Not everything on the list above is an emergency, and treating every slipped tile like a crisis is how homeowners get talked into work they didn't need. Here's the honest triage.
Water inside the house is urgent. Every storm that follows pushes more water through the same breach, and monsoon storms come in clusters. Same week, not next month.
Exposed underlayment is close behind. Missing shingles, a run of displaced tile, or a torn patch of foam coating means the waterproofing layer is taking direct sun and direct rain. It holds for a while, but it's on the clock. Within a week or two.
Cosmetic damage can wait for a calm morning. A single hairline-cracked tile, light granule loss on an older shingle roof, debris in the yard. Add it to the inspection list, but nobody needs to be on your roof at 7 pm on a Tuesday for it.
The reason triage matters is that monsoon season brings out the door-knockers. After a big storm, crews follow the damage maps into neighborhoods across Tempe and Chandler, knock every door, and push same-day signatures on inflated scopes. Some are legitimate. The ones to avoid share a pattern: out-of-state plates, pressure to sign today, and vague paperwork. The defense is boring and effective. Verify the license on the Arizona ROC website, and get the full scope and the number in writing before anyone touches the roof. Roof Boyz is licensed statewide (AZ ROC #363930), based in Tempe year-round, and the Red Glasses Guarantee means the number on your written estimate is the number on your invoice.
If you're filing an insurance claim
Storm damage from wind and hail is typically a covered peril under Arizona homeowners policies, and monsoon events generate a lot of legitimate claims. Two things are worth understanding before you call your carrier.
First, the claim runs between you, your insurance company, and the adjuster they send. Roof Boyz doesn't process claims or negotiate with carriers on your behalf. That's a deliberate choice, because contractors who chase insurance money have a habit of writing scopes for adjusters instead of for roofs.
Second, what we provide fits alongside the claim process cleanly. The Courtesy Roof Inspection produces a photo-documented written report of what failed, which gives you an independent record to hold next to the adjuster's assessment. And the estimate we write is price-locked, so if your claim is approved, you know exactly what the payout needs to cover before you commit to anything. The pre-storm photos from the monsoon prep checklist matter here too, because a dated picture of your roof before the season is the cleanest proof that the damage came from the storm and not from deferred maintenance.
For a sense of what repairs and replacements run in the Phoenix market generally, the Phoenix roof cost guide walks through industry-wide ranges from third-party data. Your actual number comes from the inspection.
The best post-storm call is the one you don't make
Everything in this guide is the reactive half of a story that has a proactive half. The roofs that come through monsoon season clean are almost always the ones that were checked before it started, because the slipped tile and the tired sealant that a storm turns into a leak were visible in May to anyone who looked. That's the whole premise of the Monsoon Roof Prep program, and the prep guide has the full checklist.
But if you're reading this with a bucket in the hallway, prep season advice doesn't help you today. What helps is knowing exactly what failed and what it takes to fix it, in writing, from a local roofer whose number doesn't change after the work starts.
