Utah Hail 2026: One Afternoon in Davis County

Utah is not Illinois. The state averages about two tornadoes a year and most of its hail is pea-sized annoyance that melts before anyone photographs it.

2026 broke that pattern once, and it broke it hard: on September 18 a supercell that formed over the Great Salt Lake dropped what residents called golf-ball hail across Davis County, pushed a 78 mph gust through West Bountiful, and spun up an EF-2 tornado east of Fruit Heights that the National Weather Service later measured at 1.1 miles wide, a state record for width. 12 That was the second tornado warning the Salt Lake City office issued all year, and the first one, for Tooele County in August, was its first since 2011.

Before September, the year was ordinary Utah: a golf-ball hail afternoon in Taylorsville and Holladay on June 25, a run of quarter-size warnings across the Wasatch Front in late August, and the usual summer thunderstorm scatter in southern Utah. This report lists what the record actually shows, event by event, with the source next to each claim so you can tell a measured stone from a radar estimate from a TV viewer’s photo. Then it gets to the part that matters: where the roofs are, what the hail did to them, and what a contractor can do about it before the snow covers the evidence.

Three witnesses to one storm

The gap between what the NWS logged on September 18 (ping-pong, 1.5 in), what every homeowner with a phone called it (golf ball, 1.75 in) and what the radar products say (2 to 2.3 in) is normal, and it is exactly the gap an adjuster will exploit. Take photos next to a tape measure.

There is no logged hail report of 2 inches or larger anywhere in Utah in 2026. A note on sizes: the National Weather Service logs what people photograph and send in, so “NWS report” in this article means a spotter or social-media report accepted by the Salt Lake City office, not a stone measured by a meteorologist.

The rest of the year

Utah’s 2026 hail record has exactly one event that put damaging hail on a dense roof stock, and that was September 18 in Davis County. Everything else is either quarter-size hail in a mountain town, a warning that never produced a logged report, or a radar vendor’s estimate with no stone on the ground to back it. The list says which is which.

1. Jun 253

   Salt Lake County: Taylorsville, Holladay, Millcreek, Murray, Sandy; Summit County: Kamas, Park City

   1.75 in Taylorsville (NWS report from public video); 1.5 in Holladay (public photo); 1.0 in Kamas (social media)

   Park City warned for 60 mph and quarter hail; stones photographed on the Orange Bubble lift canopy 4

   How solid Solid for Taylorsville and Holladay; the surrounding-city list comes from an auto-body shop’s ad, not the NWS

   SOLID

2. Jul 20

   Cedar City

   1.0 in, radar estimate only 5

   None logged

   How solid Weak: no ground report

   RADAR ONLY

3. Jul 296

   Washington County near Apple Valley

   Quarter hail in the warning text

   60 mph warned; flash flood warning on the Forsyth burn scar

   How solid Warning only, no report found

   WARNING ONLY

4. Aug 14, Aug 23

   Spanish Fork; Logan

   1.0 in each, radar estimates 5

   None logged

   How solid Weak: no ground reports

   RADAR ONLY

5. Aug 297

   Salt Lake, Davis, Utah and Tooele counties warned; Millard County (Lynndyl)

   1.25 in half-dollar near Lynndyl (NWS report via social media); quarter to ping-pong warned on the Wasatch Front

   Downtown Salt Lake City storm photographed by KUTV

   How solid Lynndyl is a real report; the Wasatch Front warnings produced no logged stones

   SOLID

6. Aug 30–313

   Big Water (Kane County); Provo, St. George

   1.0 in Big Water (NWS report); Provo and St. George 1.0 in radar estimates

   None logged

   How solid Big Water solid; the rest weak

   SOLID

7. Sep 161

   West Kaysville

   1 to 1.5 in, resident photo published by KSL

   Wednesday afternoon storm, two days before the big one

   How solid Single resident photo

   SINGLE PHOTO

8. Sep 178

   Midway (Wasatch County); Springville

   1.5 in Midway (NWS report); KJZZ published photos it called golf-ball hail on US-40; Springville 1.0 in radar estimate

   Hail affected travel on US-40 9

   How solid Midway solid at 1.5; “golf ball” is the TV station’s description

   SOLID

9. Sep 188

   Davis County: Layton, Kaysville, Fruit Heights, Farmington, Centerville, Bountiful, West Bountiful; Weber (Uintah); Morgan; Summit; Salt Lake (West Jordan)

   NWS reports: 1.5 in Kaysville west of I-15 (photo), 1.5 in via Spotter Network, 1.25 in measured half-dollar, 1.0 in Layton; media and residents: golf ball 1011; radar vendors: 2.0 in over Layton 5 and up to 2.3 in near Fruit Heights 12

   EF-2 tornado, 5.93 mi path, 1.1 mi wide (state record), 120 mph, mostly in the mountains above Fruit Heights; 78 mph gust in West Bountiful; 50 to 65 mph gusts north of Salt Lake County; roof and ceiling failure at a Layton Men’s Wearhouse; cracked windshields in Kaysville; one Kaysville homeowner reported damaged shingles, cracked solar panels, vinyl fence and vehicles, and his insurer classed the storm as a catastrophic event 1314

   How solid The one event that matters. Official max is 1.5 in; the 2 in-plus figures are algorithms, not stones

   SOLID

10. Sep 2215

    Tooele County: Grantsville, Stansbury Park

    Quarter hail in the warning text

    60 mph warned

    How solid Warning only

    WARNING ONLY

Where the roofs are

These are inspection priorities based on what was reported, not a ranking of insured losses. Utah does not publish claim counts by storm, and nobody else has either, so anyone quoting you a number of damaged roofs in Davis County is guessing.

Davis County: Layton, Kaysville, Fruit Heights, Farmington, Centerville, Bountiful, West Bountiful

This is the job. The September 18 supercell tracked northeast across the county from the lake to the mountains, which means it crossed the densest part of the corridor between I-15 and the bench: Layton and Kaysville west of the interstate took the logged 1.25 to 1.5 in stones, residents from Kaysville to West Kaysville photographed stones they called golf balls, and the radar products put the core at 2 in or more over Layton and near Fruit Heights. 8512 On top of the hail, the valley took 50 to 65 mph gusts with a 78 mph peak in West Bountiful, and Bountiful, Woods Cross and West Bountiful were under flood advisories into the evening. 111

On roofs: Davis County is subdivision country, mostly architectural asphalt shingles from the 1990s onward with a band of older housing in Kaysville, Farmington and Bountiful. Hail of 1.25 to 1.5 in with wind behind it is enough to bruise and crease architectural shingles on the windward slopes, and the collateral evidence is already in the news: cracked windshields, cracked solar panels, vinyl fence damage, a commercial roof in Layton that let the rain into a clothing store. 1314 Davis County subdivisions carry a lot of rooftop solar, and a cracked panel is a claim line item that most roofers forget to scope. One Kaysville homeowner’s carrier has already classed the storm as a catastrophic event, which is insurer language for “we expect a lot of these”. 13

Weber and Morgan counties: Uintah, South Weber, Riverdale, Mountain Green, Morgan

The same storm was warned for Ogden, Roy, Clearfield, South Ogden, Riverdale, Uintah and West Haven with 60 mph and half-dollar hail, and it was located near Uintah when the tornado warning went out. 1617 The tornado itself crossed into Morgan County over Francis Peak and did its heaviest damage to conifers around Middle Smith Lake, not to houses. 2

On roofs: treat this as a wind-and-hail edge zone. Logged hail reports here are thin, so lead with wind: lifted and creased shingles, broken seals, missing ridge caps on the exposed benches above Uintah and South Weber. Mountain Green and Morgan have newer, larger homes with a lot of metal and composite roofing; dents on metal are a cosmetic-coverage argument, not an automatic replacement.

Salt Lake County: Taylorsville, Holladay, Millcreek, Murray, Sandy, West Jordan

June 25 is the forgotten event. Taylorsville took the only logged golf-ball hail of the year (1.75 in from public video) and Holladay took 1.5 in, with the storm tracking across Millcreek, Murray and Sandy and on toward Park City. 3 September 18 added quarter hail in West Jordan and flood advisories across the central valley, but the real Salt Lake County damage is three months old and sitting on east-bench roofs nobody has looked at since.

On roofs: Holladay and Millcreek are older housing, a lot of 1950s to 1970s ranches with aging three-tab or first-generation architectural shingles, and 1.5 to 1.75 in hail is squarely in the range where those fail functionally. Taylorsville is 1970s to 1990s stock. This is the corridor where fall inspections will find damage that predates the September news cycle, which is a documentation point: the date of loss is June 25, not September 18, and the homeowner probably does not know it.

Wasatch Back: Park City, Kamas, Midway

Two hits: June 25 (Park City warned, Kamas logged 1.0 in) and September 17 (Midway logged 1.5 in, with KJZZ photographing stones it called golf balls on US-40). 89 KSL’s meteorologist called the Thursday Wasatch Back hail the warning sign for Friday’s Davis County storm. 1

On roofs: high-value homes, HOAs, a lot of standing-seam metal, synthetic shake and real cedar, and a large share of owners who were not there when it hailed. Second-home owners are reached by phone and email or not at all, and HOA boards decide for whole neighborhoods. Smaller volume, bigger tickets, slower decisions.

Everywhere else: Millard, Kane, Tooele, southern Utah

Lynndyl (1.25 in, Aug 29), Big Water (1.0 in, Aug 30), the Tooele County warning on September 22 and the Washington County warning on July 29 are real but small: rural, scattered, and in Tooele’s case a warning with no logged stone. 3156 Cedar City, Spanish Fork, Logan, Provo, Payson and St. George appear only as radar estimates with no ground report. Not worth routing a truck on the storm alone; worth a call if you already have a client there.

What 1.5-inch hail does to a Utah roof

Utah’s hail was mid-size by Midwest standards, so the question is not whether roofs were destroyed but whether they were damaged enough to claim. The field rule of thumb is that functional damage to asphalt shingles starts around 1 inch for three-tab and 1.25 inches for architectural, which puts the logged September 18 stones (1.25 to 1.5 in) and the June 25 stones (1.5 to 1.75 in) right in the zone where the inspection decides the outcome. Nothing below is a replacement threshold; it is a list of what to look for and what not to promise. Class 4 is a lab rating, not immunity.

Scroll sideways →

One Utah-specific point: a roof at 4,500 to 7,000 feet takes more UV than one in Chicago, so shingles here are brittle earlier in life, and a 1.5 in stone on a 15-year-old Davis County roof can do what it would not do on a five-year-old one. That cuts both ways in a claim: it makes damage more likely, and it makes an adjuster more likely to call it wear. The inspection photos have to show impact marks, not just old shingles.

If a contractor tells a Layton homeowner they took baseball hail, that contractor is quoting a radar map.

The clock is the snow

The Utah opportunity is narrow, dense and time-limited. It is one storm footprint over a suburban county, with winter about six weeks out, and the first wave of contractors has already made itself unwelcome. That is a better setup than it sounds, if you are not one of the first wave.

The footprint is small but it is all roofs

Davis County is a 15-mile strip of subdivisions between the lake and the mountains, on the order of 100,000-plus housing units (approximate), and the September 18 track crossed the middle of it: Layton, Kaysville, Fruit Heights, Farmington, Centerville, Bountiful. There is no farmland to dilute the hit. One carrier has already classed the storm as a catastrophic event for a Kaysville policyholder, 13 and a CAT designation usually means CAT adjusters in the area, faster inspections and a lower threshold for approving roofs inside the footprint. Whether other carriers made the same call is not public; ask the adjuster on the first claim you touch.

Add the June 25 Salt Lake County event, which is three months old and almost entirely unworked, and the Wasatch Back’s two hits, and you have three separate inspection lists with three different dates of loss.

Two windows: before the snow, after the melt

The clock is the snow, not the policy. In Illinois the deadline conversation is about policy windows. In Utah it is about November. Davis County benches typically see their first lasting snow in November, and once a roof is under snow, nobody is inspecting it until March or April. That gives contractors roughly six weeks from now to inspect, document and file. The second window opens in spring, when ice dams and meltwater find the shingles the hail cracked, and homeowners call about leaks they will blame on winter. Both windows are real; the first one is short.

On policy windows themselves: Utah homeowner policies vary on notice and proof-of-loss timing, and there is no statutory deadline to advertise. Tell the owner to file now and check their own policy, not that they have until September 2027.

The competition already burned the neighborhood

This is the part worth reading twice. A local roofer told FOX 13 that sales reps have been door-to-door across several Davis County neighborhoods since the storm, and the station ran a segment on how to spot a scam. 18

What that means for the second wave: speed without specificity is now a negative signal in Davis County. The owner who gets a call that names his street, the storm date, the logged hail size and offers a documented inspection with a photo report is getting a different call from the one he has already hung up on ten times. Referrals and reviews are carrying the market, so the first ten jobs done well in one neighborhood are worth more than a hundred cold doors.

Solar and commercial are the under-scoped lines

Utah has one of the higher rooftop-solar adoption rates in the Mountain West, and the Kaysville homeowner’s cracked, non-functioning panels are the public example of a line item most roofing claims skip. 13 A roofer who partners with a solar installer to test and scope panels on the same claim is selling something the door-knockers are not. On the commercial side, the Layton Men’s Wearhouse roof failing on camera 1014 is one building in a corridor of retail and warehouse flat roofs along I-15 through Layton and Clearfield that took the same storm with far fewer people looking at them.

How to capture it without becoming the twelfth company on someone's porch

1. Build the list from the track, not the county

• Start with the warning polygon and the NWS reports for September 18 (Layton west of I-15, Kaysville west of I-15, the Centerville to West Bountiful wind corridor), then overlay a radar swath product such as SkyVision or HailMate for the 2 in-plus core near Fruit Heights and Layton. Treat the radar core as a priority ranking, not as proof; the logged maximum is 1.5 in.
• Rank addresses by roof age and slope exposure. Davis County’s assessor data and city permit records give build year and reroof permits; a build year is not a roof age, so use the permit where it exists.
• Keep three lists with three dates of loss: Davis and Weber (September 18), Salt Lake east bench and Taylorsville (June 25), Wasatch Back (June 25 and September 17). Filing June damage under the September date is the fastest way to get a claim denied.

2. Make the first contact specific or do not make it

• The first wave called within an hour with “we have specialists in the area tomorrow” and got hung up on. 13 The second wave should open with the street, the date, the logged hail size and a documented inspection with a photo report the owner keeps. One sentence of proof beats five of reassurance.
• Phone and email are the only way to reach the owners the door-knockers cannot: Park City and Midway second-home owners, Davis County landlords, HOA boards, and the commercial property managers for the I-15 retail and warehouse corridor. Build those lists separately.
• Referrals are deciding this market. Every completed job in a Kaysville or Layton subdivision is a reason to ask for two neighbors, and a review with a street name in it is worth more than any ad.
• Door-to-door still works for the roofs nobody can reach by phone, but every door-sold contract carries the federal three-business-day cooling-off right, and the homeowner has already been told by two TV stations to be suspicious of you.

3. The inspection report is the product

• Slope by slope, with test squares and hit counts on the storm-facing slopes, and photos of the collateral that already made the news: dented vents and gutters, cracked solar glass, split vinyl fence, cracked windshields in the driveway. Put a tape measure in the hail photos; the official size is 1.5 in and the adjuster knows it.
• Separate wind from hail. September 18 brought 50 to 78 mph gusts with the hail, so creased and lifted shingles are a second peril on the same claim, with the same date of loss but different evidence.
• For solar, bring an installer. A visual check misses microcracks, and a panel that tests at reduced output is a claim line the roofer cannot write alone.
• Give the owner the report whether or not they sign. In a neighborhood that has been pitched a dozen times, the contractor who leaves something useful behind is the one who gets the referral.

4. Utah law is strict, specific, and a competitive advantage if you follow it

5. Plan the six weeks

• October to mid-November: inspect and document everything on the Davis and Salt Lake lists, file, and install what the weather and the shingle manufacturer’s temperature limits allow. Sign the rest with a spring start date and ice-and-water protection written into the scope.
• Spring 2027: the leak wave. Meltwater and ice dams will surface the September damage, and owners will call about “winter leaks.” The contractor who already has the roof documented to a September 18 date of loss wins those calls; the one starting from scratch argues with an adjuster about whether it was snow.

Where residential roofing leads fit

The calls to the Kaysville homeowner started within an hour of the hail stopping, a dozen companies followed within days, and every one of them opened with “we’re not storm chasers.” 13 A cold list and a script is how a contractor becomes the twelfth company on the porch.

A RavenPoint appointment starts with a conversation, not a database. Our agents call homeowners in your Utah service area, verify ownership, genuine interest and a real timeline, and book only the ones who agree to an inspection and expect the visit. Every appointment is exclusive to one contractor and comes with the call recording, so your rep knows what the owner said and what they want before pulling up to the house. Check how this worked in Layton, Kaysville and Fruit Heights in the days after the September 18 storm.

Pricing is per verified show-up, and a no-show is replaced. If you run residential roofing crews anywhere from Bountiful to Layton, the Utah roofing leads page explains the setup.

Check availability in your Utah service area

Outlook: a one-storm year, and that is the normal kind

Utah will close 2026 with its first Salt Lake City tornado warnings since 2011, a state-record tornado width, and one suburban county with a real hail footprint. That is not a new baseline; it is one good supercell in a state that averages two tornadoes a year and whose hail usually stays in the mountains. Build for the roofs that were actually hit, not for a repeat.

The practical version: Davis County before the snow, Salt Lake County’s June roofs while the date of loss is still inside anyone’s policy window, the Wasatch Back by phone, and all of it with photos next to a tape measure and a contract that reads the way Utah Code 13-50 says it should. The companies that did that in Kaysville in the first week are the ones getting the referrals; the ones that called within an hour are the ones KSL wrote about.