Roofing Blog

Union County, NC Hail & Wind Roof Damage

By Charlotte Premier Roofing · September 24, 2026 · 10 min read

In Union County, wind shows up in the federal storm records far more often than hail, and almost every one of those wind reports is about trees coming down. From January 2015 through June 2026 the NOAA Storm Events Database lists 53 thunderstorm wind reports for the county against 15 hail reports. So after a storm here, look at the trees over the house as hard as you look at the shingles, and get the roof inspected before anything is fixed for good.

We are based in Weddington and do storm work across Union County and next door in Mecklenburg, so we read the storm records for both counties before writing this.

What the storm records show for Union County

The Storm Events Database is NOAA's archive of the storm reports the National Weather Service collects from emergency managers, trained spotters, law enforcement, damage surveys and the public. In Union County the public and 911 dispatch filed most of them. We pulled every Union County and Mecklenburg County entry since 2015 on September 24, 2026. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information updates the database 75 to 90 days after each month ends, so the newest Union County record at that read was from late June 2026. Each entry is one report, and the database only holds what somebody reported.

Hail first. The county has 15 hail reports on 11 different days since 2015. Six were 3/4 inch, penny size. Two were nickel size and six were quarter size, and the largest was a single half dollar report, 1.25 inches, on Brady Road on June 17, 2022, which the database files under Waxhaw. The Weather Service calls hail severe at one inch and up, so seven of the fifteen crossed that line. Twelve of them fell in May, June or July, the other three in September.

One of them landed close to us. On September 7, 2023, someone reported quarter size hail in the Weddington area, and a nickel size report followed about ten minutes later, both logged under Wesley Chapel.

On May 15, 2024 it was quarter size hail in the Mineral Springs area. June 25, 2025 brought both kinds in one afternoon. 3/4 inch hail was reported at Indian Trail and then at Alton, the weather station at Charlotte Monroe Executive Airport measured a 61 mph gust, a utility company reported trees down on power lines around Indian Trail, and nickel size hail fell in Matthews on the Mecklenburg side, all in the same late afternoon.

Wind reports are logged in knots, and most of them are estimated from the damage rather than read off an instrument. Of the 53 Union County thunderstorm wind reports, 42 are logged at an estimated 50 knots, about 58 mph, which is also where the Weather Service draws its severe wind line. Measured gusts are rarer, the Charlotte Monroe Executive Airport station caught one of 61 mph on December 29, 2024. Thirty-six of the 53 wind reports fell in May, June or July.

What the wind reports describe is trees. Fifty of the 53 narratives mention trees or limbs, and six name a house or home. The public reported numerous trees down and several houses with roof damage in and around Unionville on July 15, 2017, and the next April 15 trees came down on homes on Doster Road and Unionville-Brief Road. The August 7, 2023 storm put two trees on houses in Monroe. On June 27, 2026, trees and power lines came down across southern Union County, and one tree fell on a house southeast of Monroe and hurt someone inside.

The county also has four tornado reports since 2015, all rated EF0 or EF1. On March 5, 2025, an EF1 started near Porter Ridge High School, and the Weather Service survey found a house under construction on Ridge Road with part of its roof lifted off, presumably by air rushing in through the window and garage door openings. Then there was Helene. On September 27, 2024, the county's forecast zone logged hundreds of trees down, dozens of them on homes, vehicles and power lines, with frequent gusts of 50 to 60 mph and occasional gusts to 70. The database puts property damage for the zone at $2 million, and its own FAQ calls those figures broad estimates.

Across the county line in Mecklenburg

Mecklenburg's list is longer. From January 2015 to its newest entry, in March 2026, the county logged 40 hail reports and more than 120 thunderstorm wind reports, and the hail has run bigger. Four reports were golf ball size, 1.75 inches: the Huntersville area on April 20, 2015, north Charlotte to the UNC Charlotte area on March 21, 2017, between Davidson-Concord Road and East Rocky River Road on September 1, 2017, and across north Charlotte on June 26, 2023. Penny to quarter size hail came down in Uptown on May 16, 2023.

August 7, 2023, the day of the Monroe trees, hit Charlotte too. The emergency manager reported trees and power lines down throughout the city, trees on homes and vehicles especially in east Charlotte, and a man hurt when a tree fell through his house.

What hail does to a shingle roof

Hail bruises shingles without tearing anything you would notice from the driveway. The bruises are soft spots where the shingle mat has been crushed under the granules, and they are found by hand. Our owner walks each slope pressing on the shingles and runs a hand along the tabs for broken seal strips, and every hit gets photographed slope by slope.

The soft metals get photographed too, meaning vent caps, gutter lips, drip edge and flashing. In our experience the dents in those are what an adjuster uses to size the hail, and that counts for a lot in a county where more than half the hail reports are under an inch. From the ground, look for dents in the gutters, downspouts, vent caps or the AC condenser fins, and for granules washed into the gutters or piled at the downspout splash blocks after a storm.

Whether a 3/4 inch storm marked your roof depends on the roof, and we would rather look than guess. One Google reviewer had damage from a hail storm, and after our owner inspected, their insurance agreed and our crew removed and replaced the roof and gutters in one day. Another had an inspection turn up hail damage, called their insurer, which came out and ended up paying for the roof.

What wind does, and why the trees matter more here

Wind works on the edges. Tabs get lifted, creased or torn off along the ridge and the rakes, and a lifted tab can settle back down and look fine from the yard. One reviewer had our owner and a coworker replace their wind-damaged shingles and seal the exposed nails they found on the roof.

Going by the county's storm record, the more common wind problem in Union County is a limb or a whole tree. A limb through the decking leaves the roof open to the next rain, and the damage has to be photographed before anything covers it. When we tarp a hole like that, the pictures come first so the record for your adjuster is intact, and the tarp gets battened in above the damage rather than nailed through it.

If a tree is on the house, tell your insurer right away. Once it is off the roof, we can photograph the damage and put the temporary cover on.

The first calls after a storm

The Department of Insurance lays out the order on its windstorm and hail page. Report the loss to your agent or company, list the damage and take clear pictures before any temporary repair, stop further damage with something like a tarp and keep the receipts, and hold off on permanent repairs until the insurer has inspected and you have agreed on the cost. The dates that come after that are in our post on filing deadlines for storm roof claims in NC, so they are not repeated here.

For water already coming in, we do emergency tarps and roof repair, and a tarp counts as a temporary repair in the Department's terms.

Door knockers after a storm

The Department has a page on this too. Its first line of advice is to beware of contractor or roofing representatives going door-to-door after a disaster. It also says to call your agent or insurance company before signing a contract or paying for repairs, get more than one estimate and do not get pushed into signing on the spot, get the cost, the work, the schedule and the payment terms in writing, never sign a contract with blanks in it, and never pay in full until the work is done.

We do not go door to door the morning after a storm. One reviewer with roof damage after a recent storm reached out to six roofers before choosing us, and wrote that photos of the before and after were provided.

Which deductible applies to your claim

The Department explains that a windstorm or hail deductible is usually a percentage of your Coverage A dwelling amount, printed on your declarations page, and our post on filing deadlines walks through its example.

Helene brings up a second kind. A named storm deductible applies to wind and hail loss during a storm the National Hurricane Center or the Weather Service has given a formal name, and that includes tropical storms. The Department's page says the window typically opens when an advisory, watch or warning for the named storm is issued for any part of North Carolina, and closes 24 hours after the last watch, warning or advisory for any part of the state, whichever is later. Its example is a 2% named storm deductible on a home insured for $300,000, which comes to $6,000. That one is usually a percentage as well and shows on the declarations page, so read both lines before the adjuster comes out.

Some policies leave out windstorm and hail altogether, depending on where you live and the insurer's underwriting, the Department notes. If you have a separate wind and hail policy, it carries its own deductible.

When you and your insurer do not agree

The Department's loss prevention page describes the appraisal step in a homeowners policy. If you and the company cannot settle on a figure, either side can demand an appraisal. Each side picks a competent and disinterested appraiser within 20 days of the other side's written request, the two appraisers choose an umpire, and a figure agreed by any two of the three sets the amount of the loss. You pay your own appraiser, and the umpire's cost is split.

There is also a Disaster Mediation Program, but it only opens after a disaster is proclaimed by the Governor or declared by the President and the Commissioner of Insurance issues an order activating it. When it is running, a homeowner whose claim was denied in whole or in part can ask for a mediator with no tie to the insurance company, as long as the dispute is over the amount or the cause of the loss, the claim or the gap between the two sides is at least $1,500, and the request goes in within 60 days of the denial.

We are not part of either process. What we can hand anyone involved is the photo report, slope by slope, with the soft metals in it. And if the insurer pays for part of the roof and not all of it, what it has to replace is covered in our post on the 25% rule for roofing in North Carolina.

What we do after a storm in Union County

We are based in Weddington and take storm calls within 25 miles of it. On the Union County side that takes in Waxhaw, Marvin, Wesley Chapel, Indian Trail, Stallings and Monroe, and across the line Charlotte, Matthews and Mint Hill. We do not work in South Carolina. Our page on roofing in Weddington, NC covers the work closest to home.

The inspection is free. Our owner does it by hand and by drone, and the photos come to you first. If there is a claim in it, we write the photo report your insurer asks for, you call your insurer, and our owner meets the adjuster on the roof. One reviewer wrote that our owner met with their adjuster about the hail and wind damage, which made things much less stressful, and then helped them pick out shingles and a color that looks right on the house. Another needed slate roof repairs after a big storm and wrote that we followed through and explained everything we were seeing.

After the claim is settled we build the roof the way we build every replacement, tear-off to the decking, new synthetic underlayment with ice-and-water in the valleys, new drip edge, pipe boots and flashing, a ridge vent, and Owens Corning Duration architectural shingles, with our 5-year workmanship warranty on the finished roof.

If a storm has come through your part of Union County, book a free photo inspection through our storm damage and insurance claims page.