Recorded events
Hail and wind recorded near Fullerton
This page is the recorded storm history for Fullerton, not a general article about hail. Radar detections on two days in the last five years, on 19 March 2024 and 5 October 2021.
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The hail record
The most recent detection was on 19 March 2024, about 2 years ago. Radar sized the largest stone in that cell at about 0.5 inches, small, and unlikely on its own to have marked a sound roof. The nearest cell was about 6.4 miles away, which is close enough to be worth checking and far enough that it may have missed the house entirely.
| Date | Largest stone sized by radar | Nearest cell | Cells that day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19 March 2024 | 0.5 in | 6.4 mi | 4 |
| 5 October 2021 | 0.75 in | 9.2 mi | 2 |
Wind
Over 5 years of daily records at this location, the highest modelled gust was about 51 mph, below the 58 mph severe threshold but well into the range that finds anything already lifted or loose. There were 17 days above 39 mph and 3 above 45 mph in that period, concentrated in January, February, and March.
| Date | Peak gust |
|---|---|
| 21 March 2023 | 44 mph |
| 25 February 2023 | 51 mph |
| 8 November 2022 | 41 mph |
| 9 September 2022 | 42 mph |
| 11 May 2022 | 40 mph |
| 20 March 2022 | 40 mph |
| 14 December 2021 | 49 mph |
| 11 October 2021 | 40 mph |
The checks worth making
The ridge and the edges
Wind does not lift a roof from the middle. It gets under an edge — the rake, the eave, the ridge cap — and peels inward from there. Those are the places to look at from the ground with binoculars after a wind event, and they are the places a marginal roof gives up first.
The soft metal, first
Start with the parts that bruise easily: gutter faces, downspouts, vent hoods, the aluminium trim. They are the network of soft targets around the roof, and they record a hail event more legibly than the shingles do. Clean metal is meaningful evidence.
Inside, before outside
The underside of the deck is the most honest surface on the whole house. It shows water that has not yet reached a ceiling, and it tells you roughly how long the water has been arriving.
What landed on it
Wind-blown debris is the cause of a surprising share of storm claims, and it is the one kind of damage that is genuinely obvious once somebody looks.
Granules where they should not be
Look in the splash blocks and at the base of the downspouts. Granule loss concentrated in one area, rather than spread evenly, is the pattern that points at impact rather than at age.
The claim window
Every policy sets a period within which a loss has to be reported, measured from the event rather than from the discovery. That is the practical reason a dated record of local storms is useful to a homeowner at all.
None of which means filing on every storm. It means knowing the date, having the damage looked at, and then deciding — in that order.
The full guide to how a roof claim works
About this data
Hail detections come from NOAA NCEI’s Severe Weather Data Inventory (NEXRAD product nx3hail) within 10 miles of Fullerton. Radar sizes hail in a storm cell; it does not observe what landed on any particular roof. Gust figures are daily maxima from the ERA5 reanalysis archive at this city’s coordinates, which is a model of the weather rather than a reading from an instrument in the neighbourhood. Both are useful for dates and for scale, and neither is evidence about your roof. Last refreshed 2026-08-31.
Commonly asked
There was a storm near me. Do I have damage?
A recorded storm nearby is a reason to have the roof looked at, not evidence that anything happened to it. The useful first check costs nothing: dents in the soft metal around the roof, and a look in the attic on a bright day.
Where do the storm dates on this site come from?
They are public federal and reanalysis data for this city’s coordinates rather than anything we measured. Radar sizes hail in a cloud; a reanalysis models wind. They tell you when something happened near here, which is exactly the thing an insurer asks for first and the thing that is hard to reconstruct later.
How long do I have to report storm damage?
Less time than most people assume, and the clock runs from the date of the event rather than from the day you noticed. Policies require prompt notice and set an outer limit on reporting. That is the single most common reason late-discovered damage is denied, and it is why knowing the date of the storm matters.
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