North St. Paul hail damage came from the largest stones anybody measured on June 19. We drove Garden Avenue in Little Canada in the first week of August, six weeks after the storm, to see what this end of the corridor looked like once things had settled down.
We had not been on it thirty seconds before the first roofing sign, on an older roof with plain damage on it. Then out of state plates. A second company after that. Then a house with a brand new roof already finished.
Six weeks on, and they had not left.
This is one of nine neighborhood write ups behind the full June 19 map and record.
Why North St. Paul Hail Damage Is Different
This end of the corridor took the largest stones in the storm.
The National Weather Service recorded two inch plus hail near northern St. Paul, with several stones measured over two inches. The nearest measurement we were able to place precisely, a couple of miles north northeast of St. Paul, came in at two and a quarter inches. That is the biggest number anywhere in this metro on June 19.
Two and a quarter inches is not an old roof problem. It is a roof problem. At that size, shingle age stops being the deciding factor.
What It Looked Like Six Weeks Later
The staying power was the story. A month and a half after the storm, crews were still working these streets, with plates from states that do not get this kind of work, in numbers that meant somebody had been watching the radar back in June with a map open.
We are not going to pretend that is illegitimate. Storm work is a real trade, some of those crews are good, and after an event this size the metro genuinely does not have enough roofers. What is worth naming is the sequence. In a normal roof replacement the homeowner decides they have a problem and goes looking for help. Here, help arrived first and told the homeowner they had a problem.
Same roof, same damage, completely different position to be making a decision from.
The Housing Stock On This End
Little Canada and North St. Paul run older and more mixed than the newer suburbs. A lot of mid century single family homes, some of them into their third roof, alongside newer infill.
Under two inch hail, that mix stops mattering as much as it does further west. This is the one part of the swath where we would expect to find damage on relatively new shingles, and where "my roof is only eight years old" is not the reassurance it usually is.
What You Can Check Yourself
Gutters, downspouts, furnace and plumbing vents, window wrap, the mailbox, the air conditioner fins. Granules heaped at a downspout outlet. The cars that were outside that Friday evening, which on this end of the storm took a beating.
If You Already Signed Something
Worth knowing, and it is your right rather than our opinion. Minnesota Statute 326B.811 gives you 72 hours to cancel a residential roofing agreement after your insurer notifies you that it denied the claim, and the agreement must carry that notice in boldface, at a minimum of 10 point type, with a detachable cancellation form attached. If the paperwork you signed in June does not have it, that is better to find out now.
There is also a deadline question that people on these streets are starting to ask, and it does not have one clean answer. Minnesota has two statutes that set a limit on commencing a suit under a policy and they give two different numbers. Both are deadlines to bring a lawsuit rather than deadlines to report a claim, and which one governs your policy is a legal question about your policy form, which is not a question a roofing company is permitted to answer for you. Both statutes are laid out on the main storm page, quoted and attributed, along with the practical part: a roof cannot be reliably inspected from November through April, so whatever window applies to you is shorter in working months than it looks on a calendar.
We do not interpret policies. Minnesota Statute 325E.66 says a residential contractor may not, unless they hold a public adjuster license, and we do not.
What We Will Tell You
We did not knock on a door on Garden Avenue and we are not going to. If you want somebody to look, you can call us, and if the answer is that your roof is fine that is what you will hear.
More on storm and hail damage repair and our work across St. Paul and Ramsey County.