Service
Weather Event Check
You saw Calgary hail on the news from three time zones away and there is nothing you can do about it.
Calgary sits in one of the most active hail corridors in North America, and a single storm cell can pass over a few communities while leaving the rest of the city dry. A weather event check is an out-of-cycle visit booked after something specific happened, to document whether it reached your property.
Common triggers are summer hail and wind, heavy or wet snow loading, extreme cold events, freeze-thaw swings during a chinook, and heavy rain over saturated spring ground. What gets documented depends on the event: impact marks on siding, screens, and grade-level surfaces after hail; downed branches and displaced items after wind; envelope and heating observations after extreme cold; and drainage, sump area and basement observations after heavy rain or rapid melt.
Documentation immediately after an event is worth more than the same documentation three weeks later, because it establishes timing. Whether that documentation supports any particular claim is a matter between the owner and their insurer — the value here is having it at all, dated, rather than reconstructing events from memory.
Common questions
What should I do about hail if my Calgary home is empty?
Book a check after any significant hail event near the property, and do it promptly rather than eventually.
Calgary sits in one of the most hail-prone regions in North America, and storm cells are narrow — one community can take severe damage while an adjacent one takes none. Regional weather data tells you a storm occurred near your property; only someone at the property can tell you whether it was affected.
The value of a prompt check is timing. Documentation made within a day or two of an event establishes when damage occurred, which is a far stronger position than reconstructing events from memory months later when a leak finally appears.
A ground-level check documents impact on siding, screens, soft metals, glazing, decks and anything left outdoors. Roof damage frequently is not visible from the ground and does not leak immediately — compromised shingles can hold until the next significant rain or the following spring. If ground-level evidence suggests impact, a qualified roofing professional should assess the roof properly.
Before the season, two practical steps: move vehicles and outdoor furnishings under cover where possible, and confirm with your broker what your policy covers for hail and what deductible applies.
Do chinooks cause problems for vacant properties?
Yes, and they are underrated as a risk precisely because they feel like relief.
A chinook can raise temperatures 20 to 30 °C within a day, then drop them back overnight. That cycling is harder on a building than steady cold. Snow melts and refreezes, building ice dams at roof edges. Meltwater runs toward foundations and refreezes in downspouts and window wells. Materials expand and contract repeatedly.
Chinooks also bring strong wind — sustained speeds regularly exceeding 100 km/h in west and southwest Calgary and in the foothills. That produces roofing damage, displaced outdoor items, and wind-driven water intrusion at windows and wall junctions.
The practical response is to check the property after chinook events rather than only on a fixed schedule: look at roof edges for ice dam formation, confirm downspout discharge is clear and running away from the foundation, check ceilings near exterior walls for the first signs of intrusion, and confirm nothing has been displaced by the wind.
What happens if the power goes out while I am away?
More than people expect, because a surprising amount depends on it. The furnace stops — even a gas furnace needs power for its controls, blower and ignition. The sump pump stops. Freezers thaw. Any connected sensor or camera goes offline, which means you also lose the ability to find out that any of this happened.
In an Alberta winter the furnace is the one that matters. An extended outage during a cold snap produces the same outcome as a heating failure, on the same timeline.
What helps: knowing outages have occurred at all, which a power-loss alert or a smart thermostat going offline will tell you. A generator or battery backup for a sump pump is worth considering on a property with a known water table. And for a long absence, emptying and switching off the freezer removes one whole category of problem.
A visit after any significant local outage is worth booking, because the failures that follow one are often not visible until somebody walks in.
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