Arizona Monsoon Roof Checklist: Before, During and After
True Blue Roofs AZ · July 30, 2026 · East Valley
Monsoon season officially runs from the fifteenth of June to the thirtieth of September. It doesn't arrive as steady rain. It arrives as a wall of dust, then a microburst that can gust well beyond sixty miles an hour, then more water in twenty minutes than the roof has seen in months. Everything the summer sun quietly weakened gets tested in a single afternoon.
Here's what to do on either side of that.
Before the season: the June walk around
You can do most of this from the ground with a decent pair of eyes. Please don't climb onto a tile roof. Tile breaks under foot traffic and a cracked tile you caused is a new leak path.
- Look along the ridges and edges. These take the wind first. Anything already sitting proud, shifted or cracked will be the first to leave.
- Check the valleys. Where two roof planes meet, water concentrates. So does blown dust, palo verde litter and gravel. A packed valley holds moisture against the underlayment long after the sun is back out.
- Clear the drainage. On flat and low slope roofs the scuppers and drains are the only way out for water. Grit blocks them, and a blocked scupper turns a roof into a shallow pool during exactly the storm you needed it to drain.
- Look at the penetrations. Plumbing vents, HVAC curbs, evaporative coolers, satellite mounts. Rubber boots crack in this climate and sealant shrinks away from what it was gripping.
- Trim back what's touching. Branches over a roof become levers in a sixty mile an hour gust and they abrade the surface even in normal wind.
During a storm: watch, don't climb
Nothing on a roof is worth being up there in a microburst. What is genuinely useful is noticing where water appears inside, and roughly when. If a stain shows up on a ceiling twenty minutes into every heavy cell but never in light rain, that's a real diagnostic clue about how much water it takes to overwhelm the entry point.
If water is actively coming in, put something under it, move anything that matters out of the way, and photograph it. Then call once the weather has passed.
After the storm: what actually counts as damage
Some of this you can see from the ground with a zoom lens on a phone.
- Tiles that have moved. Slipped, lifted, rotated or gone entirely. Look hard at ridges, hips and the perimeter, and check the ground and the side yard for pieces.
- Shingles lifted or creased. A shingle that has been folded back by wind and laid down again has a crease in it. That crease is a failure line even though the shingle is still technically in place.
- Debris impact. Gravel from a neighbouring roof, branches, anything airborne. Look for punctures and bruising rather than only for missing material.
- Displaced flashing or drip edge. Metal that has peeled up at an edge or a wall junction.
- Blocked or overflowing drainage. If water was pouring over the edge of a flat roof rather than out of the scupper, the drainage failed and it will fail again next time.
- New interior stains. Note the date and photograph them. Water travels, so the stain is often not below the entry point, but the timing still matters.
Documenting it properly
If you're going to involve insurance, the record you build in the first days matters. Photograph what you can see safely, note the date of the storm, and keep any photographs of interior damage with timestamps intact.
We document what we find with photographs and written notes so you have a clear record to work from. What we won't do is promise you an outcome on a claim, because that decision belongs to your insurer and to the adjuster who comes out, not to a roofer. Anyone guaranteeing you an approval before an inspection is telling you something they can't know.
The storm chaser problem
After a significant cell, out of state crews appear in East Valley neighbourhoods within days. Some are fine. Plenty knock doors, press for a signature on the spot, offer to cover your deductible, and are three states away by the time the workmanship shows itself.
A reasonable filter: are they local enough to still be here in five years, will they inspect and show you photographs before asking for anything, and are they willing to tell you your roof is fine? A contractor who inspects fifty roofs after a storm and finds fifty replacements isn't inspecting.
What we do on a post storm visit
We get up there where it's safe, photograph the field, the valleys, the flashings and every penetration, and then show you. Sometimes the answer is a handful of tiles and a flashing repair. Sometimes there's genuine damage worth documenting properly. Sometimes nothing happened and we say so.
Related reading: how long roofs actually last in Arizona heat and what we look at on a storm inspection.
Book a free post storm photo inspection across Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Scottsdale and the rest of the East Valley.