Hail and Wind Damage on Slate, Tile and Cedar Roofs

Every roofing material fails a little differently under impact, and the three covered here are the ones where a homeowner's asphalt-trained eye can miss the damage entirely, or worse, cause more of it during the check. Natural slate, clay or concrete tile, and cedar shakes and shingles are stiffer, more brittle, or simply older technology than asphalt, and hail or wind does not bruise them the way it bruises a shingle mat. It cracks them, chips them, splits them, or works them loose.

01 / THE SHORT ANSWERPremium materials break, they rarely bruise

A fiberglass-mat asphalt shingle is designed to flex a little and absorb an impact, which is exactly why so much hail damage on asphalt is invisible from the ground: the mat bruises instead of failing outright. Slate is quarried stone. Clay and concrete tile are fired or cast masonry. Cedar is solid wood split or sawn into shakes and shingles. None of those materials flex the way an asphalt mat does, so the same hailstone or the same gust produces a different kind of evidence: a crack, a broken corner, a split along the wood grain, or a piece that has slipped out of alignment or off the roof entirely.

That difference in failure mode is also why the identification approach below reads differently for each material, and why the safest way to check any of them starts on the ground, not on the roof plane itself.

02 / SLATECracks, delamination, and slipped pieces

Slate is stone split along its natural grain, and it fails the way stone fails under stress: it cracks. A hard hail strike, or debris carried by wind, can leave a hairline crack that is nearly invisible the day it happens, then widen the following winter as freeze and thaw cycles work water into the fracture line and pry it further open.

Hairline cracks

Look for a thin line running across a piece, often catching the light differently than the surrounding slate in low, raking sun. A cracked slate can still shed water for a season or two before it finally lets go, which is exactly why these are easy to miss until they fail outright.

Delamination

Slate forms in layers, and a strong enough impact can separate the face of a piece into thin sheets rather than cracking it clean through. Delamination shows up as a lighter, rougher patch where a layer has lifted or flaked away, and it weakens the piece even when nothing appears to be missing.

Slipped or missing pieces

Slate hangs from a nail or hook near its top edge, and wind strong enough to work a piece loose lets it slide down the slope or come off the roof completely. A slipped slate leaves a gap that reads like a missing tooth in the roof plane, and it exposes the underlayment beneath it to weather it was never meant to face alone.

03 / TILEBroken corners and lifted pieces

Clay and concrete tile tends to fail at its weakest point, usually a corner or an exposed edge, rather than across the whole piece. A hail strike or a falling branch is more likely to snap a corner off cleanly than to crack a tile down the middle, and a broken corner can look small and cosmetic from the ground while it opens a real path for water at the headlap, the spot where one tile overlaps the next course.

Cracked and broken tiles

A clean crack across the body of a tile, rather than at a corner, usually means a harder or more direct impact. Look for a visible line, a piece sitting slightly lower than its neighbors, or two halves that no longer align the way the rest of the course does.

Slipped and lifted tiles

Wind works tile loose at the nose, the exposed lower edge of each piece, lifting it just enough to break its interlock with the tile below before setting it back down slightly out of line. That shift is easy to miss from the street and easy for a trained eye to catch up close, since it changes the shadow line running across the whole course.

04 / CEDARSplits, cupping, and impact bruising

Wood is a natural composite, and it fails along its grain. A hard enough hail strike splits a cedar shake or shingle lengthwise, following the grain rather than shattering the way a more brittle material would. Impact can also crush the surface wood fibers without leaving a visible split at all, a dull, slightly depressed patch that darkens after the next rain because crushed fibers hold water differently than the wood around them.

Splits along the grain

A fresh split reads as a clean line, usually running the full length of the piece, with the two sides sometimes cupping away from each other slightly. Older weathered splits can blend into the natural checking that cedar develops over the years, which is exactly why dating a split matters and photographing it right after a storm, before the wood grays further, helps.

Cupping and curling

Cedar cups and curls over time as it wets and dries unevenly, and a curled shake catches more wind than a flat one. That means older, already-cupped cedar is more likely to crack at the fastener line or pull free entirely in a wind event that a flatter, newer shake would shrug off, so the storm often reveals damage that years of weathering had already set up.

Impact bruising

Because a wood bruise does not always show as a clean split, this is the sign most likely to get missed from the ground. A soft, slightly darker patch that appears after the next rain, in a spot with no visible crack, is worth photographing and mentioning to whoever inspects the roof, even if it looks like nothing at first glance.

05 / THE RIGHT SEQUENCEWhy walking these roofs makes it worse

These three materials share one trait that asphalt does not: the roof itself can be more fragile than the inspection method most people picture. Slate cracks underfoot. Concrete and clay tile can crack under a boot placed at midspan instead of over a fastener, even on a piece that showed no sign of storm damage before that step. Cedar shakes that have already dried and weathered can crumble under weight a newer shake would carry without a mark. Walking any of these roofs to "check for damage" risks creating exactly the damage the check was meant to find.

On slate, tile, or cedar, the wrong way to look for storm damage is to walk out and look for it. The roof underfoot is part of the evidence, not a platform to stand on.

The safer sequence starts on the ground. A patient walk around the property with a pair of binoculars, working slope by slope in good, low-angle light, catches most of what matters: cracked corners, slipped or missing pieces, a split running with the grain, a course that no longer lines up with its neighbors. No special equipment is required, just time and a systematic path around the house, and our guide to checking storm damage from the ground covers that pass in full detail for any roof type.

A trained professional closes the gap from there. They know where a foot can safely land on slate or tile, near the fastener line, never at midspan, and when a roof is dry and sound enough underfoot versus fragile enough that the closer look needs to happen from a ladder at the eave instead. That is the sequence worth insisting on: ground first, professional second, boots on the roof plane only when someone who does this daily decides it is warranted.

06 / THE PROFESSIONAL READGetting a real answer without the guesswork

Because these materials sit at a different price point than asphalt, what an inspection finds changes the math more than it would on a standard roof. A full slate or tile replacement in Macomb County runs $20,000 to $36,000 installed, well above the asphalt range, so confirming that a handful of cracked or slipped pieces need a targeted repair instead of a full re-roof is worth getting right the first time.

Repairs, when damage is limited to a few cracked or slipped pieces and the underlayment beneath them is intact, run within that same $350 to $3,200 repair range used on any roof, though sourcing matching slate, a compatible tile profile, or the right cedar grade can add time to the schedule that an asphalt repair would not. If the inspection turns up an active leak while parts are being matched, we offer 24/7 emergency tarping to keep the interior dry until the permanent repair goes in. For a broader read on how a storm may have affected the whole roof, not just these three materials, our pillar guide on signs of hail damage and our guide to hail on metal roofing cover the comparison directly, useful if your home mixes materials across different roof sections.

If you are also weighing whether a full roof replacement makes more sense than another round of repairs, or you are working through the claims side of a storm event, our storm and insurance claims guide walks through documentation and what a contractor can and cannot promise about the outcome. A free inspection is the starting point either way: it covers the material itself, the underlayment where anything has slipped, and the attic side of the deck, with photos of everything found, and you can start that from the storm damage estimator or by calling direct.

One more note on cost expectations: the published ranges above are the same figures on our honest pricing page, and the cost calculator runs those numbers against your own roof if you want a ballpark before anyone comes out.