PNW windstorms don't really look like windstorms on the weather app. You'll see a forecast for 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 45, and you'll think, fine, it's another Tuesday in Seattle. Then the Convergence Zone sets up north of town, or a Pineapple Express ramps up off the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and suddenly your neighbor's cedar limb is in your driveway and the trampoline is two houses down. We see the aftermath every winter, and the damage pattern is remarkably consistent once you know what you're looking at.
Here's the thing about wind damage in the Puget Sound. It's rarely the dramatic stuff that does the real harm. A tree through the roof is obvious. You know exactly what happened and you call somebody. The damage that bites homeowners months later is the damage you can't see from the street, and there's a lot more of that than people realize.
**Start with a lap around the house.** Before you climb anything or call anyone, walk the perimeter of your yard. Shingles on the ground are the tell. Even one. If you find a piece of asphalt shingle in the grass, that came off your roof or a neighbor's, and you need to figure out which. Look around the drip line of the house first. A lot of the time you'll find granules washed out in a pile below the gutter downspouts, which means shingles somewhere up there have been beaten on hard enough to shed their surface.
**Check the yard for branches and debris.** Cedar and fir branches do a lot of damage to roofs even when they don't puncture anything. A heavy limb that bounces off the ridge can crack or displace shingles without leaving an obvious hole. If you find branches in the yard that came from your own trees, assume the roof took at least a glancing hit and get it looked at.
**Look for "blown up but not off" damage.** This is the big one. In 50 to 70 mph gusts, a lot of shingles get lifted and folded back without fully tearing free. They flop down when the wind dies and look totally normal from the ground. But the adhesive seal strip underneath, the thing that bonds each shingle to the one below it, is broken. The shingle is loose. Next time the wind picks up, that tab is gone, and now water has a direct path to the underlayment. From the ground with binoculars, scan the slopes facing the storm direction (usually south and southwest here). If you see anything that looks slightly wavy or off-pattern, that's a red flag.
**Ridge caps and flashing.** Ridge caps take a lot of wind abuse because they sit on the highest, most exposed part of the roof. Look for any section where the ridge line looks uneven or where a cap has shifted. Then check the flashing around the chimney, skylights, and any dormer walls. Bent or lifted flashing is subtle but a serious leak source once the rain returns.
**Downspouts and gutters tell a story.** If you see fresh dents, pulled brackets, or a gutter that's sagging away from the fascia, the wind was strong enough to move it, which means it was strong enough to move shingles too. Gutters that are suddenly full of granules after a dry storm are another sign. Those granules came from somewhere, and it's not good news for the shingle they came off of.
**The roof can look fine and still be compromised.** I can't stress this enough. We've walked roofs that looked pristine from the yard and found a dozen broken seal strips on the windward slope. The shingles will lay back down flat after the wind stops and give zero visual cue from below. The only way to catch that is to actually get on the roof and lift the tabs by hand. That's a roof repair inspection, not a DIY afternoon.
**Document everything before anyone touches it.** If there's visible damage, pull your phone out and start taking photos. Wide shots, close-ups, shingles in the yard, branches in the gutters, anything obvious. Date-stamped photos before any mitigation work starts are worth their weight in gold if you end up filing an insurance claim. Our insurance restoration team walks homeowners through this process all winter, and the cleanest claims are always from the people who took pictures first.
**Tarp or call?** If water is actively coming in, tarp it. If you can't safely get up there, call. Either way, you want the active leak stopped within a few hours. Our emergency roof repair crew handles tarping seven days a week for exactly this reason. We've got a whole breakdown of what to do in an active emergency here: emergency roof repair in Seattle.
**The 24 to 48 hour window.** Most homeowner insurance policies require you to mitigate further damage after a storm event. That means if you know you've got a hole in the roof and you don't tarp it, and then it rains for three days and the ceiling caves in, the carrier can deny the additional damage. You've got roughly a day or two to act before that clock starts counting against you. Not to scare anybody, but that's just how the policies read. Get it documented, get it tarped, and start the claim. Everything else can wait.
Once the immediate stuff is handled, the bigger question is whether the roof can be repaired or if the damage tipped it into replacement territory. If you're wondering about that, we laid out exactly how we make that call here: how to tell if your roof needs repair or a full replacement. And if you're heading into fall and want to avoid storm damage in the first place, our fall rain prep guide is the place to start.
Want a fast number on what repairs might run? Our instant roof quote tool gets you a ballpark in about two minutes without needing to talk to anybody.
