Maplewood hail damage came from the largest hail measurement we can place precisely on June 19. Two and a quarter inches, just north of Maryland Avenue. We solved that position from our own survey work in the first week of August.
Two miles southwest of it, people heard constant thunder all evening and never got a drop of rain.
That is the storm in one sentence, and it is why this end of the metro needs a map more than anywhere else.
This is one of nine neighborhood write ups behind the full June 19 map and record.
The One To Two Mile Line
The Minnesota DNR recorded it directly: areas west and south of downtown St. Paul heard constant thunder and got no rain, while areas one to two miles north and east saw heavy rain and hail.
If you live in this part of the city or in Maplewood, that line ran somewhere near you, and which side of it your house sat on decided everything. Not the neighborhood. Not the ZIP code. The block.
This is also why asking a friend across town is worthless on this storm, and why "my sister in Highland Park says it was nothing" tells you nothing at all about Maryland Avenue.
What The Maplewood Hail Damage Reports Measured
The National Weather Service recorded two inch plus hail near northern St. Paul with several stones measured over two inches. The DNR named Maplewood and the northern and eastern parts of St. Paul among the hardest hit communities in the metro.
The two and a quarter inch measurement we placed sits just north of Maryland Avenue East. We solved that position from our own survey measurements, which is why it is a pin on the map rather than a city name in a list.
The storm kept going from here, crossing I-94 and dropping half dollar sized hail as far east as Woodbury before it left the state.
What This Means For These Roofs
Two and a quarter inches changes the calculation.
Across most of this storm the deciding factor was roof age, because an inch to an inch and a quarter bruises brittle old mats and bounces off newer ones. At two inches and up that stops being true. Stones that size damage roofs of almost any age, and they damage the things around the roof too: vents, gutters, downspouts, window and door wrap, siding, skylights, air conditioner fins.
The housing stock here does not help. A lot of Maplewood and the East Side is mid century, plenty of it on its second or third roof, much of it modest pitch. A modest pitch takes a stone more squarely than a steep one, where hail tends to glance off.
What We Have And Have Not Done Here
We surveyed roofs in this corridor in early August. We have not walked these streets block by block the way we walked Roseville, Columbia Heights and Brooklyn Center, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
If you are on these blocks and you want us to come look at your street specifically, tell us. That is how we plan the next round of this.
What You Can Check Yourself
At this size the ground evidence is usually plain. Soft metals first: gutters, downspouts, furnace and plumbing vents, window wrap, the mailbox, the air conditioner fins. Then granules heaped at a downspout outlet. Then the cars that were outside that Friday evening.
The bruising in the mat under the granules is the damage that matters, and it does not announce itself. Somebody has to get on the roof and find it.
What We Will Tell You
If your roof came through clean we will tell you it came through clean, and we will not come back.
We do not interpret policies. Minnesota Statute 325E.66 says a residential contractor may not advise you on your coverage unless they hold a public adjuster license, and we do not. What we do is climb, find, document and hand it over. What the law says, in full, including the two statutes that give two different deadlines to bring a suit, is on the main storm page.
More on storm and hail damage repair and our work across St. Paul and Ramsey County.