Hail season by the numbers: when roofing demand arrives

Every roofer knows hail season is coming. Fewer know exactly when it arrives in their own market, and that gap is where a lot of spring marketing money goes to waste. Budgets get switched on in April because April feels like spring, when in some states a fifth of the year’s hail has already fallen by then, and in others nothing much happens until June.

So we went to the source. The NOAA Storm Prediction Center publishes every hail report it logs as a downloadable file, and we counted the reports from 2021 through 2024 by month and by state: 34,215 of them, ranging from quarter-inch pellets to more than 200 reports of hail four inches across or larger. Here is what that count says, and what to do with it in the weeks you have left.

The national year, month by month

Across the country, hail is a late spring and early summer event. The share of all reports that fell in each month over those four years:

• January 0.7%, February 1.7%. Next to nothing.
• March 7.4%. The season opens in the South and the southern Plains.
• April 16.1%, May 25.4%, June 19.3%. The core of the year. These three months held 60.8% of every report.
• July 13.6%, August 7.8%. Still active in the northern Plains and the Mountain states.
• September 4.6%, October 1.8%. Tapering fast.
• November 0.7%, December 0.9%. Quiet again.

The big stones follow the same curve. Reports of hail two inches or larger peaked at 1,073 in May and 921 in June across the four years, against 611 in April.

Your state’s curve matters more than the national one

The national numbers are an average of very different seasons. Plan from your own.

• Texas logged more reports than any other state, 5,464 in four years, and 73% of them fell from March to May. May alone carried 38% of the Texas year. Summer hail in Texas is rare: July and August together were about 2%.
• Oklahoma follows a similar pattern, with 32% of its reports in May and a small second bump in September.
• Florida peaks earlier than most people expect, with 36% of its reports in April.
• Missouri and Georgia start fast. Missouri logged 16% of its year in March and Georgia 22%.
• Colorado runs on a different clock: nothing to speak of before May, then 31% of its reports in June, 25% in July and 15% in August.
• The Dakotas run latest of all. South Dakota’s biggest month was July at 29%, and 86% of North Dakota’s reports fell between June and August.
• Minnesota spreads its season from May through August, with May and July each carrying about a quarter.

Coastal roofers have a second calendar layered on top. The National Hurricane Center dates the Atlantic hurricane season from June 1 to November 30, with the peak around September 10 and most activity between mid-August and mid-October. A Gulf Coast company can finish one claim season in June and start the next in August.

Why the slow months are slow

Winter is not only short on storms. The NRCA has long warned that asphalt shingles become brittle in cold temperatures and that self-sealing strips may not bond properly until it warms up, which is why northern replacement work clusters between spring and fall and why January calls lean toward leaks and emergency repairs.

The quiet months still produce work, just not from the weather. Insurance renewals are the biggest source of it. In Florida, an insurer must let the owner of a roof 15 or more years old have it inspected before requiring a replacement, and cannot refuse a policy on age alone if the inspection shows five years of useful life left. Renewal letters arrive in every month, and a letter about the roof sends a homeowner looking for a roofer whatever the weather.

Work backward from your first storm week

Find your state’s first big month on the list above, then count back. Most of what makes storm season profitable has to be built before it starts.

Local Services Ads take weeks to approve. Google puts the average screening time at three to four weeks after documents are submitted, and roofing screening covers liability insurance, a verified Business Profile and the state license where the law requires one. A Texas or Florida roofer applying in late March may not be live until the season is well underway.

Reviews have a short shelf life. BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, published last month, found 74% of consumers only care about reviews written in the last three months, and 32% look for reviews from the last two weeks. The reviews homeowners read during a May hailstorm are the ones you collect in February, March and April. Ask every winter repair customer now.

The phones decide who gets the job. CallRail’s 2025 analysis found home services businesses missed 14% of calls. In a storm week the call volume can swamp a two-person office, and every missed call goes to the next roofer on the map. Decide now who answers overflow, evenings and weekends.

Storm ads have legal limits. Texas, Colorado, Minnesota and Florida all restrict advertising that offers to cover a homeowner’s deductible, and Florida requires printed disclosures on flyers and door hangers that prompt a roof claim. Write and check the storm ads now, not the morning after the hail.

What to do this month

• Look up your state’s peak months above and move ad budget toward the weeks just before them, not into an even monthly split.
• Submit or update your Local Services Ads application today if your first big month is April or May.
• Send a review request to every customer from the last three months, with the direct link to your Google profile.
• Set up call handling for overflow, lunch hours and evenings before the first storm, and test it.
• Read every storm ad, flyer and door hanger against your state’s deductible rules and license-number requirements.
• If you work the Gulf or Atlantic coast, put an August reminder on the calendar to repeat this list for hurricane season.

The companies that do well in storm season are rarely the ones with the biggest spring budget. They are the ones whose profile, reviews and phones were ready a month early. Our page for roofing companies sets out how we time that work to each region, and our Google Ads and Local Services Ads work covers the paid side. For the review side, see how we run review requests.