Recorded events
Hail and wind recorded near Lake Forest
Radar has picked up hail-bearing storm cells within ten miles of Lake Forest on 3 separate days: 18 March 2024, 3 September 2022, and 5 October 2021. Here is what was recorded, and what is worth checking as a result.
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What the radar recorded
The most recent detection was on 18 March 2024, about 3 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 passed within about 1.8 miles of the centre of Lake Forest.
| Date | Largest stone sized by radar | Nearest cell | Cells that day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 March 2024 | 0.5 in | 1.8 mi | 4 |
| 3 September 2022 | 1.0 in | 8.7 mi | 4 |
| 5 October 2021 | 1.0 in | 2.3 mi | 4 |
The wind record
Over 5 years of daily records at this location, the highest modelled gust was about 53 mph, below the 58 mph severe threshold but well into the range that finds anything already lifted or loose. There were 26 days above 39 mph and 5 above 45 mph in that period, concentrated in January, February, and March.
| Date | Peak gust |
|---|---|
| 8 January 2025 | 50 mph |
| 14 March 2024 | 53 mph |
| 29 October 2023 | 49 mph |
| 25 February 2023 | 50 mph |
| 23 January 2023 | 47 mph |
| 1 January 2023 | 44 mph |
| 2 February 2022 | 44 mph |
| 14 December 2021 | 44 mph |
What to look at after a storm
What landed on it
Wind-blown debris causes a surprising share of storm damage, and it is the one kind of damage that is genuinely obvious once somebody looks.
The soft metal, first
Gutters, downspouts, vent caps, and any aluminium fascia are softer than the roof covering and dent before it marks. If there are no dents in the soft metal, there is very probably no impact damage on the shingles either. This is the check an inspector makes before getting on the roof, and you can make it from the ground.
What the street is doing
Neighbourhoods built at once wear out at once, so a run of work on one street is often a cohort reaching its age rather than a storm. Both are worth knowing about; they are not the same thing.
Flashing, chimneys and skylights
Most storm leaks are not through the field of the roof. They are at a junction — a chimney, a skylight, a wall abutment, a valley — where something is meant to be sealed and is not any more. Wind opens those seams before it opens anything else.
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.
Where these numbers come from
Hail detections come from NOAA NCEI’s Severe Weather Data Inventory (NEXRAD product nx3hail) within 10 miles of Lake Forest. 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.
Questions after a storm
There was a storm near me. Do I have damage?
There is no way to know from the weather record, and this site does not claim otherwise. Two houses on one street come out of the same night in completely different condition. What a nearby storm gives you is a date and a reason to look — starting with the gutters and vent caps, which dent before shingles mark.
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