Hail, wind, and what the record actually says
Storm numbers are the most abused thing in roofing advertising. These are the real ones, with the sources named and, more importantly, with what they do not measure spelled out.
- Sheet
- A11
- Subject
- Storm record and statute
- For
- A homeowner after a storm
- Trade
- Roof repair, roof replacement
The county hail record
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration logged 125 hail events in St. Louis County between 2020 and 2025. The largest reported stone in that window was 2.5in and the average reported stone was 1.32in. For neighbouring counties over the same window: St. Charles 54, Jefferson 44, Franklin 30.
Now the part that roofing advertisements leave out. Those are counts of logged reports, not counts of insured losses and not counts of damaged roofs. Hail reporting depends on a human being present to see it and to report it, which means reporting density tracks population density. Hail that falls over a dense suburb gets counted. Identical hail falling over farmland or river bottom does not. So the difference between the St. Louis County figure and the Franklin County figure is partly weather and partly the number of people standing under it. A company that puts 125 on a postcard without that caveat is not informing you, it is frightening you with a number it has not explained.
Season
April and May carry roughly 56 percent of the metro's annual hail reports, per the NOAA Storm Prediction Center climatology for this forecast area. If your roof is going to be hit, it is overwhelmingly likely to be hit in spring.
The 2025 season, on the record
| Figure | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 253,241 catastrophic claims | From the 2025 season, with more than $2.9 billion paid and roughly 83 percent of it residential. | Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance |
| EF3, 152 mph | The May 16 2025 St. Louis tornado. It began near Clayton at 2:41pm and tracked 22.6 miles, with a maximum width of 1.8 miles, the widest in this region in the whole of the modern record, which begins in 1950. Five people died. | National Weather Service for the rating and the track |
| $1.6 billion damage | The damage estimate for that same event. | NCEI, which is a separate body from the NWS and is cited separately for a reason |
| DR-4877-MO | The federal declaration covering St. Louis City and County: 9,427 individual assistance approvals, $58.13M in individual and household programme money and $105.01M in public assistance. | FEMA |
| 5th nationally | Missouri ranked fifth in the country for major hail events, with 253 in 2025. | Insurance Information Institute, citing NOAA Storm Prediction Center |
| 2nd for hail dollars | State Farm separately ranked Missouri second in hail claim dollars paid. This is a different measure from the one above and the two should not be added together or merged into one claim. | State Farm |
Those are large numbers and they are real. What they establish is that this is a genuine storm market, not that your particular roof is damaged. Whether your roof is damaged is a question that gets answered by somebody getting on it and photographing it, which is a much less exciting sentence than the ones on the postcards.
The line Missouri law draws
This is the part of storm roofing where a homeowner in this state is most likely to be misled, and it is worth being precise about.
Missouri statute makes it unlawful for a roofing contractor to offer to handle your claim, and Keys does not offer it. The same section separately forbids a contractor from advertising that it will pay your deductible or rebate any part of it. No roofer in this state may negotiate with the adjuster on your behalf. A company that tells you it will work directly with your insurer is telling you that it either does not know the statute or does not care about it, and neither is a good recommendation. A violation is an unfair practice under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.
What a contractor may properly do, and what Keys does, is this: get on the roof, photograph what is there, measure it, produce a written scope of work with those photographs attached, and be present on site as the contractor when the adjuster comes out. That is genuinely useful and it is the whole of it. The claim, the policy, the negotiation and the decision all remain yours.
- Public adjusters are a separate licensed profession in Missouri under RSMo chapter 325. There is no statutory cap on what they charge, and RSMo 325.055 bars a public adjuster from performing the repair work. If somebody offers you both roles at once, something is wrong.
- You have ten years to sue an insurer on a written contract under RSMo 516.110(1), and RSMo 431.030 makes a contractual clause shortening that null and void. A policy that says you have one or two years to sue does not override the statute.
- Missouri has no matching statute and no matching regulation for roofs. The citation that circulates on this subject governs automobile body parts. The only Missouri authority is case law: Alessi v. Mid-Century Insurance, 464 S.W.3d 529 (Mo. App. E.D. 2015). It turns on your policy wording.
One real thing that is expiring
Missouri created a tax credit equal to a homestead insurance deductible incurred in 2025, capped at $5,000 and transferable. It is real, it is in statute, and no new credits are authorised after October 15 2026. It is not a roofing product and Keys has nothing to sell you in connection with it. It is mentioned here because almost nobody in this industry is telling Missouri homeowners about it and it is worth asking your own tax preparer whether you qualify.
Everything above is published so that you can check it. Statute numbers are given so you can read the text at revisor.mo.gov, and the storm figures name the body that published them so you can go and look. A roofing company that gives you a number without a source is asking you to trust the number and the company at the same time, which is twice as much trust as it has earned.