How do I know if the hail actually damaged my roof?
Look at the soft metal before you look at the shingles. Gutters, downspouts, vents, garage doors and window screens dent visibly at hail sizes that leave a shingle looking almost untouched from the ground. If the soft metal around your house is marked, the roof is worth a proper inspection. If none of it is, the storm probably passed you.
Hail bruises a shingle rather than breaking it
A hailstone striking asphalt knocks granules loose and fractures the mat underneath. From the ground that looks like nothing. Up close it is a dark circular spot where the granules have gone, and pressed with a thumb it feels soft, like a bruise on fruit.
Those granules are the shingle's sunscreen. Once they are gone the asphalt underneath is exposed to ultraviolet light and starts to degrade. That is why hail damage matters even when the roof is not leaking. It has shortened the roof's life rather than ended it today.
What you can check from the ground in five minutes
Walk the perimeter and look at anything soft and metal. Gutter faces and downspouts show dents clearly. Vents, turbines and the metal caps on plumbing stacks bruise obviously. Garage doors and window screens are excellent indicators because they are large, flat and at eye level.
Then look in the gutters and at the base of the downspouts. A heavy deposit of granules after a storm means the roof shed material it was not supposed to shed. A little is normal, especially on a newer roof still losing loose granules from manufacture.
Storms here are narrow, so your neighbor is weak evidence
A hail core can be a few hundred meters across. It is entirely normal for one side of a street to have a claim and the other side to have nothing but a wet lawn.
That cuts both ways. Your neighbor getting a new roof does not mean you need one, and your neighbor being fine does not mean you are. The only reliable answer comes from somebody on the roof.
Related questions
How big does hail need to be to damage a roof?
Roughly an inch is the usual threshold for asphalt shingles, though older and more brittle roofs bruise at smaller sizes. Wind driving the hail matters as much as the diameter.
The storm was two years ago. Is it too late?
Depends on your policy, and many carry a claim window measured in a year or two. It is worth checking rather than assuming either way.
Can I just look at photos of my roof from a drone?
A drone shows you missing shingles. It will not reliably show bruising, which is what a hail claim turns on.
