A hail adjuster walks the roof. Siding damage is on the walls, it is directional, and it is routinely left off the first scope — which matters, because Minnesota has no statute requiring your siding to match.
Hail arrives at an angle, so siding damage concentrates on the elevations facing the storm — and an adjuster who inspected the roof may not have walked all four sides. Check the same storm’s direction against your house. And know this before anyone tells you otherwise: Minnesota has no matching statute. Whether undamaged siding gets replaced to match turns on your policy’s own language, not on state law.
On vinyl, the signature is cracking or a chipped, punched hole rather than a dent — vinyl gets brittle in cold, and a lot of Minnesota hail falls when it is not warm. Look along the bottom edge of each course and at the lock, where the material is thinnest.
On aluminium and steel, it is dents, which read best in low-angle light. Stand at the end of a wall and look along it rather than at it. On fibre cement and engineered wood, it is chipping and punctures, often around the nail line.
Check the things that are not siding too: window wraps and capping, fascia, soffit, gutters and downspouts, the AC condenser fins, and any vents. Those are soft metal and they dent at sizes that leave harder surfaces alone, which makes them useful evidence that hail of a given size actually reached your property.
Partly because the inspection is organised around the roof, and partly because it is genuinely directional. Hail driven from the north-west damages the north-west elevations and may leave the opposite walls untouched, so a walk that covers two sides can reasonably conclude there is nothing there.
It is worth knowing which way the storm came from. If a storm report for your county is on this site, it tells you when it happened and where the reports came from, and that is usually enough to work out which elevations to look at first.
If you find damage after the adjuster has been, that is a supplement rather than a new claim. It is an ordinary thing to file.
That is the matching question, and the honest answer is that it depends on your policy, not on Minnesota law. This is worth being blunt about because a lot of contractor websites say otherwise.
Minn. Stat. § 65A.10 is widely cited as Minnesota’s “matching law.” It is not. The section has exactly two subdivisions, Buildings and Personal property, and neither mentions siding, roofing, matching or uniform appearance. Anyone telling you the state requires your insurer to match is either mistaken or counting on you not checking.
What actually decides it is the replacement-cost language in your own policy and the case law interpreting it, together with whether a reasonable match is available at all — a discontinued colour or profile is a materially different argument from one still on the shelf.
Minn. Stat. § 65A.10 has two subdivisions, “Buildings” and “Personal property.” Neither contains the words siding, roofing, matching, or uniform appearance. Read the section and check. Source: Minn. Stat. § 65A.10
Photograph it yourself, with a date, and put something in frame for scale — a coin or a tape measure beside an impact tells an adjuster more than a wide shot of a wall. Do each elevation separately so it is obvious which side is which.
Do not repair anything beyond what is needed to stop water getting in, and keep the receipts for whatever you do. Temporary protection is usually covered; a permanent repair made before the inspection removes the evidence.
Then get a written assessment of the whole exterior rather than just the roof. We do that as one scope, because the hail did not treat them as separate projects.
Yes. Building permits are required for re-siding in Minnesota, and the inspection covers the water-resistive barrier and flashing — the parts that disappear behind the new siding. That is covered in its own guide.
If your claim covers both roof and siding, there is a flashing detail at the roof-to-wall intersections that only gets done right when both trades are coordinated. It is the kind of thing that leaks two years later if two crews work past each other.
MN Dept. of Labor and Industry: “Building permits are required for the re-siding of existing dwellings and structures.” Source: MN DLI, Re-siding and the 2020 Minnesota Residential Code
This page quotes Minnesota statutes and the adopted Minnesota building code and links to the official text of each so you can read it yourself. It is general information from a licensed contractor, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for reading your own policy. Statutes and codes are amended; the linked sources are authoritative, this page is not. Last reviewed 2026-10-27.
Straight answers to the questions Minnesota homeowners ask before they call anyone.
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Read the guide →Gutters are thin aluminium, so they record hail faithfully — which is why adjusters use soft metal to confirm that hail of a given size actually hit…
Read the guide →Make it safe and stop further water getting in — temporary protection is normally covered, and keep the receipts. Photograph everything, by…
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Read the guide →Costs, materials, timelines, financing, and how we work — across roofing, siding, windows, and gutters.
Read the FAQ →We’ll walk it, photograph it, and give you a written scope that says exactly what is required and why. Retail or insurance.
We’ll walk the roof, photograph what we find, and hand you a written scope that names the code requirement behind every line. Yours to keep, whoever does the work.
We measure the work by how it holds up — and by what clients say once we're gone.