Storm

Monsoon Storm Damage Roof Checklist for Scottsdale

By Scottsdale Roof Repairs · September 7, 2026 · 5 min read

Mid-September, and most years the monsoon has one or two storms left in it. If you have been through a microburst this summer — the kind that takes down a mesquite on Hayden and puts tile in the pool — this is the walk-around to do now, before the winter rains find whatever the wind opened up. It takes twenty minutes from the ground and the attic. Nobody needs to get on the roof for it.

What a monsoon storm does to a roof

A microburst is a column of cold air from a collapsing thunderstorm hitting the ground and spreading out at 60 to 80 mph. It is brief and local. It lifts eave and rake tile, drives rain uphill under the field tile, strips trees and fills valleys and scuppers with debris, and occasionally throws hail. A haboob ahead of it loads the roof with fine dust that turns to mud in the rain behind it. None of this is a hurricane; the damage is smaller and more scattered, which is exactly why it gets missed until it leaks in January.

The walk-around

From the ground

Walk all four sides of the house with binoculars or a phone on zoom.

• Tile on the ground, in the pool, in the planters. Count it and photograph where it came from if you can see the gap.
• Eave and rake tile stacked, tilted or missing. The first course and the edges go first because the wind gets under them. The felt under a missing tile is now in direct sun and will fail fast.
• Ridge and hip tile displaced. Mortar-set ridge tile on 1980s and 1990s roofs comes loose; you will see gaps or tile sitting crooked along the ridge line.
• Field tile cracked. Hail cracks show as bright, clean breaks; they are easy to see from the ground on flat concrete tile and harder on S-tile.
• Debris in the valleys. Palo verde litter, mesquite pods, eucalyptus bark. A valley packed with debris dams the water sideways over the flashing.
• Skylight domes. Cracked or punched acrylic from hail or a branch.
• Stucco at roof-to-wall transitions. New cracks or gaps where the wall meets the roof.
• Shingle roofs: lifted or creased tabs, shingles in the yard, granules piled at the downspout outlets.

On flat and foam roofs

Most of these can be seen from a ladder at the parapet without stepping on the roof.

• Scuppers and overflow drains blocked with debris and dust-mud. This is the one that floods a flat roof.
• Standing water more than 48 hours after the storm. Ponding on foam means the slope to the scupper has been lost or the scupper is choked.
• Blisters or tears in the coating, especially at the parapet where the stucco meets the roof.
• Gravel displaced on older built-up roofs, exposing the asphalt.
• A dust layer an inch thick after a haboob. It holds moisture against the coating and it needs to come off.

In the attic and the house

• Ceiling stains, new or grown, anywhere
• Wet or compressed insulation below a suspected spot
• Daylight at pipes or the ridge from inside the attic
• A musty smell in a closet under a roof valley

What to photograph, and why

If any of the above is more than a couple of tiles, photograph everything before anyone touches it: wide shots of each slope from the ground, close-ups of displaced tile, the debris on the ground, any interior staining with a date visible. Adjusters want to see the damage as it was, and roofers who tarp before photographing are doing you a disservice. Note the date and rough time of the storm; the National Weather Service in Phoenix logs every event, and a claim that lines up with a recorded microburst is a much easier claim.

What is a claim and what is not

Sudden wind and hail damage — tile stripped from an eave, hail across a slope, a skylight punched through — is generally covered by an Arizona homeowners policy, less your deductible. Rain that got through 22-year-old felt is wear, and it is not, even though the storm is when you noticed. A dozen broken tiles is usually under the deductible and not worth a claim on your record. We separate the two honestly on the storm damage page and in the scope we write. Anyone who tells you the whole roof is a total loss before they have lifted a tile is selling, not assessing. The questions to ask a contractor post has the rest of that conversation.

What to fix now, before winter

1. Re-secure and replace perimeter tile. Exposed felt under a missing eave tile degrades in weeks. $300–$600.
2. Clear the valleys and scuppers. The cheapest repair on the list and the one that prevents the most winter leaks.
3. Replace cracked tile before the next rain finds the crack.
4. Reset displaced ridge tile with new mortar or foam adhesive.
5. Patch coating tears on foam, and if the recoat was due anyway, October is the month — see the foam recoating short list.
6. Tarp anything you cannot fix this week. Emergency tarping explains what that costs and buys.

Doing the roof check the right way

The list above is for the ground and the attic. Lifting tile to see the felt, walking foam for soft spots, checking every jack — that is a roof inspection, and after a bad storm it is worth the fee. It tells you whether the wind found a roof that was fine, or a roof that was already on its way out and now has a reason to be dealt with this fall instead of next August.