Hail report vs. hail map: what each one can prove
Both are useful. They answer different questions, and mixing them up is how a claim ends up arguing about a map instead of a roof.
Where it went vs. what fell hereUse both, for different jobs
A hail map answers “where did it go?”
A hail map shows a storm’s path across a region, usually as bands of estimated hail size. It is the right tool for the wide view: which towns to look at after a storm, where to send crews first, which part of a book of policies is likely to call.
Most hail maps are drawn from radar. Radar sees the storm from a distance and thousands of feet up, and estimates what reached the ground over an area. That is why a map is good at the shape of a storm and weak at a single roof: near the edge of a swath, the house on one side of the street and the house on the other can sit inside the same estimate.
A hail report answers “what fell here, and when?”
A hail report is about one address on one date. It should say when hail started and ended there, how big it got with its certainty stated, how that was established, and, just as usefully, when nothing above threshold fell. It is the document that goes in a claim file, in front of an adjuster or into a renewal.
When to use which
- Planning after a storm: a map. Find the markets that took hail before you canvass or send adjusters.
- A single roof or a single claim: a report. Establish the date of loss and the size at that address.
- A whole portfolio or book: both. The map tells you where to look; address-by-address answers tell you which properties actually took hail and which did not.
What to check in either one
- What it is built on. Radar alone, reports from people, or measurements from the ground.
- Whether it states its certainty. An answer with no confidence attached is hard to defend.
- Whether it labels estimated versus measured. The two should never be mixed without saying so.
How Hailios does both
The Swath Report is the Hailios map: where the hail swath went, in size classes, up to 50 km across, drawn from Hailios Fusion AI rather than radar alone. The Post-Event Report is the Hailios report: one address, one storm, measured where a Tessera stands and ground-trained everywhere else in North America, with the label on every answer.
More on the address question: how to verify the date of hail at an address.
A map to plan with, a report to file
Hailios makes both from the same ground-trained record, so the swath you plan with and the report you file agree.