Two Nights, Two-Inch Stones: What the October 20 and 21 Phoenix Hail Means for Valley Roofers
A supercell crossed Chandler and Mesa late Tuesday and a second round hit north Phoenix and Glendale Wednesday afternoon. What was reported, why hail in the Valley plays differently than Denver or Dallas, which roofs are the real leads, and the Arizona rules before a crew goes out.
Phoenix roofers can go years without a hail week. They just got two nights of it. A supercell moved north through Chandler and Mesa late Tuesday, October 20, and a second line crossed north Phoenix and Glendale on Wednesday afternoon. Public spotter reports put the biggest stones at two inches on both days.
The last time Valley roofers saw stones like that over that many homes was October 5, 2010. That storm is still the costliest weather event in Arizona history. This one is smaller, but it is real, and the homes under it are the freshest hail leads anywhere in the country right now.
What was reported, night by night
Hail sizes below are spotter and public mPING reports relayed through NWS Phoenix. Radar-estimated sizes for the same cells will differ a little, and our radar-versus-spotter check explains how much.
| When | Where | Reported |
|---|---|---|
| Tue 10-20, about 10:10 PM | 3 mi W of Gilbert, Chandler (AZ Ave and Elliot) | 1.00 in, dime to quarter |
| Tue 10-20, 10:10 PM | 3 mi SW of Mesa | 1.00 in |
| Tue 10-20, 10:22 to 10:25 PM | 3 mi ENE of Mesa | 1.00 in measured, then a pile of 1 to 2 in stones |
| Wed 10-21, about 3:30 PM | North Phoenix, 19th Ave and Peoria; Metro Center at 31st Ave | Golf ball to baseball reported on the ground |
| Wed 10-21, afternoon | Near Glendale and Deer Valley | About 2.00 in, the largest of 31 Arizona hail reports that day |
The NWS special weather statement Tuesday night cited gusts of 50 to 55 mph with the hail. A 61 mph gust was measured in Phoenix on Wednesday, and about 4,400 APS and SRP customers were without power at 4:30 PM. In Mesa, trees came down on cars at an apartment complex near Gilbert Road and University Drive. In north Phoenix, homes near 19th Avenue and Peoria lost windows and had holes punched in exterior walls, and tow trucks were clearing a Metro Center lot where nearly every car had dents or broken glass.
Hail that breaks windows and punches walls is hail that damaged roofs. The news crews point cameras at cars because the roofs are 20 feet up. The roofer's job is to be the first person who looks up.
Why Valley hail plays differently than Denver or Dallas
Three things change the playbook when the swath is over Mesa instead of Aurora or Arlington.
Hail is rare here, so homeowners don't know the drill. A Denver homeowner has filed a hail claim before, or their neighbor has. Most Valley homeowners never have. Nobody is waiting for your knock, and nobody has a roofer already. The home with a two-inch stone on the patio and no idea what to do about it is the best kind of lead there is.
The roof is probably tile or foam, not shingle. Most Valley homes carry concrete or clay tile, and many older and flat-roofed homes carry sprayed foam. A one-inch stone that would bruise a 3-tab shingle often bounces off a concrete tile. Two inches at 60 mph is different: cracked and shattered tiles, broken corners, and craters in foam that let water into the deck. Our stone size by roof type post covers the thresholds. For the Valley, Tuesday's Mesa cell and Wednesday's north Phoenix cell are the ones over the two-inch line, and that is where tile breaks.
The underlayment, not the tile, is the claim. Tile is a rain screen. The underlayment under it is the roof. On a 1998 East Valley house the underlayment is 28 years old and at the end of its life. Hail that breaks tiles exposes it, and the fix is often a full lift and relay, which is why 2010-era Valley tile claims routinely ran into five figures. Arizona also produced a lot of "cosmetic" disputes over tile after 2010. Read the cosmetic damage exclusion before the first adjuster meeting. A chipped tile corner is cosmetic. A cracked tile over exposed underlayment is not.
Which homes are the leads
Do the funnel the way we do it for a Colorado swath. Illustrative numbers for one East Valley cell:
| Step | Homes |
|---|---|
| Single-family homes under the radar-estimated 1 in or larger swath | 12,000 |
| Under the radar-estimated 1.75 in or larger core | 3,500 |
| Roof built or replaced 15 or more years ago | 1,900 |
| Owner-occupied, not a rental or vacant | 1,400 |
Twelve thousand doors is a month of knocking for a six-person crew. Fourteen hundred is a week. And the 1,400 are the homes where a two-inch stone met a tired underlayment, the one combination that reliably turns into an insurance roof. The East Valley subdivisions that went up between 1995 and 2007 are full of exactly those roofs.
The one Valley-specific filter to add: skip the 2011 and 2012 roofs. Many homes under the 2010 swath were re-roofed in the two years after it, and parts of that swath overlap Wednesday's north Phoenix cell. Hail on a 14-year-old roof with newer underlayment is a repair, not a replacement. Roof year sorts those homes in seconds. A door knock sorts them in a month.
The Arizona rules before a crew goes out
Arizona is stricter than Colorado or Texas on who may touch a roof, and looser on who may dial.
- A Registrar of Contractors license is required. Any roofing job over $1,000 in labor and materials needs an active ROC license, R-42 for residential or the dual CR-42. There is no city-by-city license like Colorado Springs or Fort Worth. Out-of-state crews that rolled in after 2010 ran into the ROC, and homeowners can check a license number online in a minute. Put yours on the flyer.
- Each city regulates door-to-door sales separately. Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert each have their own solicitor and peddler rules. Check the ordinance for the city the crew is standing in, the same way Fort Collins and Windsor differ.
- Calls run on the federal registry only. Arizona does not keep a separate state no-call list, so the National Do Not Call Registry and the TCPA are the whole rulebook. The 31-day scrub and the $500-per-call private lawsuit still apply, exactly as in our Do Not Call guide. Maricopa County sits in the 480, 602, 623 and 928 area codes, all inside the registry's free five.
- Read the policy's notice clause. Arizona has no statute that sets a hail claim deadline. The policy does, usually "prompt notice" with a one-year or two-year outer limit for suit. The Valley adjuster pool is not jammed this week the way Colorado's is every June. Claims filed in the next 30 days get looked at fast.
None of this is legal advice. Check the ROC and the city codes before the first knock.
The 90-day plan
- This week: pull the homes under the radar-estimated 1.75-inch cores in Mesa, Chandler, north Phoenix and Glendale, sorted by roof year. Knock the 15-year-plus roofs first, tile and shingle alike.
- Next two weeks: work the one-inch-and-up ring, shingle and foam roofs first. Tile under one inch is mostly a free inspection, not a claim.
- November and December: the homeowners who ignored the first two weeks notice ceiling stains after the next rain. The second pass through the core is cheaper than the first.
The 2010 storm damaged an estimated 150,000 Valley roofs and ran to about $2.7 billion in insured losses, according to NWS Phoenix. This week's two cells are a fraction of that. But a fraction of 150,000 roofs, concentrated in a handful of ZIP codes, is more than any one roofer can work. The roofer who sorts them by stone size and roof age on day one gets the best of it.
How we handle it
We score every home under a swath the same way in Maricopa County as in Denver or Fort Worth: radar-estimated stone size within 1.5 miles of the roof, roof year from the county assessor, owner-occupancy, and the Do Not Call flag on every phone number that comes back. The morning list after a storm like Tuesday's is the 1,400 homes, not the 12,000, with the biggest stones and oldest roofs on top.
Run your crew's numbers for a Valley swath through the cost-per-job calculator. When you want the homes already sorted, our territories do that for one roofer per city at a flat price on the pricing page. If your city is still open, check the territory map. First come.
One roofer per city. Real leads from real storms.
Exclusive Colorado territories with NOAA-verified storm scoring and TCPA-compliant outreach data.
"Anything over an inch" is the rule of thumb, and it's wrong for half the roofs you'll knock. Here's the lab data on what stone size actually breaks 3-tab, laminated, wood and tile roofs, why stone energy climbs so fast past 1.5 inches, and how to set your own cut line on a storm list.
A radar-estimated hail footprint looks like an enormous lead list until you run the drop-off at every step — roof age, storm intensity, deductible funding, contactability. Here's the full funnel with the arithmetic shown, and why the leverage is never at the top of it.
Radar found 99% of Colorado's 2026 spotter-confirmed hail. But the size number on the map is a different animal — and the 'biggest stone near this house' figure most maps show you runs about 1.25 inches high. Here's how to read one like a roofer.