The roof is leaking in a storm. What to do until it stops.

Move everything out from under the drip, put something under it that will not overflow, and if the ceiling is bulging, relieve it deliberately from the side rather than waiting for it to fail. Then stay indoors. Nothing you can do on a roof in a storm is worth what it risks.

There is no valve for this one. The water stops when the weather does, so the job for the next few hours is containment and documentation, not repair.

Contain it properly

The instinct is a bucket. A bucket works for an hour and then overflows, and a bucket on a hard floor splashes.

• Put a towel in the bottom of the bucket. It kills the splash and the noise.
• Use something with real capacity if the flow is steady: a storage bin, a trash can, a cooler.
• Set the container on a folded towel, and put a plastic sheet or a trash bag under that.
• If it is running down a wall rather than dripping, tape a length of string from the wet point into the bucket. Water follows the string.
• Empty containers before they get heavy. A full bin is more than you want to lift across a wet floor.

Move furniture, rugs, and anything absorbent right out of the room, not just out from under the drip. Water in a ceiling void runs along joists and comes through wherever it finds a seam, which is often several feet from where it entered.

If the ceiling is sagging

A ceiling holding water is carrying a load it was never built for, and it fails all at once rather than gradually. If there is a visible bulge, a dark bowed patch, or drywall tape lifting, that is the priority over the drip.

The controlled option is to make one small hole at the lowest point of the bulge with a screwdriver, from the side, with a bin underneath, and only if the circuit to that room is off and there is no fixture in or near the bulge. The full sequence for a ceiling holding water is here, and it is worth reading before you put a screwdriver into a ceiling.

If any of those conditions do not hold: close the door, keep everyone out, and let it fail on its own. A collapsed ceiling is a repair. A person under one is not.

Where the water is actually coming in

Almost never directly above the stain. Water enters at a break in the roof surface, runs down the underside of the decking or along a rafter, and drops at the first low point it reaches. The distance between the two is routinely several feet, and up a slope in the other direction.

The usual entry points, in rough order of how often they are the answer:

• Flashing, meaning the metal where the roof meets something else: a chimney, a wall, a skylight, a vent pipe. Most roof leaks are flashing leaks, not shingle leaks.
• Missing or lifted shingles after wind.
• A blocked gutter or valley, so water backs up under the shingles instead of running off.
• Ice damming in winter, where melt refreezes at the eave and pushes water back up under the roof surface. This one is temperature, not rain.
• A vent, satellite mount, or old fixing that has worked loose.
• Condensation in a poorly ventilated attic, which drips like a leak but happens on cold clear nights rather than in rain.

If you can get into the attic safely with a flashlight while it is still raining, look for the wet track and follow it uphill. Photographing that track is worth more later than photographing the stain.

Document it while it is happening

This is the evidence that decides the claim, and it disappears when the sun comes out.

• Video of water actually coming in, with the storm audible.
• Photographs of the ceiling, the stain, the containers, and every wet possession.
• The date and time, and ideally a screenshot of the weather warning or the local forecast for that day.
• Photographs from the ground of anything visibly wrong with the roof: missing shingles, a displaced ridge, debris, a fallen branch.
• Photographs of your yard and the street, which corroborate that the storm was what it was.

Keep receipts for tarps, buckets, a hotel, anything you spend. Most policies expect you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage, and the cost of doing so is usually part of the claim.

Whether insurance pays turns on one question

Was the roof opened by the storm, or was it already failing?

Most homeowners policies cover sudden damage from wind and hail, including the water that gets in through the hole the wind made. Most exclude wear, age, deterioration, and poor maintenance, including water that got in because the roof was worn out or the flashing had failed over years.

That is the whole argument, and it is why the photographs matter. A branch through the roof is not in dispute. A twenty year old roof leaking at a chimney in heavy rain is exactly the case an adjuster will treat as maintenance.

Two more things that commonly come up:

• Roof surfacing may be settled on actual cash value, meaning depreciated for age, even where the interior damage is settled at replacement cost. Check your policy for a roof surfacing endorsement or a separate wind and hail deductible, which is common in storm exposed states and is often a percentage of the dwelling limit rather than a flat amount.
• Damage from water is treated separately from the roof repair itself. The policy may pay to dry and rebuild the ceiling while paying little or nothing toward the roof.

The wider picture of what gets covered and what gets denied is worth reading before you make the call, but do make the call promptly. Storm claims also carry a deductible that is often a percentage rather than a flat amount, which is worth knowing before you authorize any work.

When the weather clears

Get a tarp on it or get a roofer to, before the next rain. Emergency tarping is a normal service and it is usually covered as reasonable mitigation. How it is done properly, and who pays for it. Then inspect the roof from the ground and the attic, never from on it.

Then deal with what got wet inside. Insulation that has been soaked stops insulating and stays wet for a long time, drywall that got wet from above will show it in a week, and the window before it becomes a mold problem is 24 to 48 hours. An attic is exactly the kind of unventilated, forgotten space where that goes wrong quietly.

Be careful about who you sign with in the days after a storm. Roofing after severe weather attracts people who arrive at the door with a clipboard, and an assignment of benefits signed on your porch is worth understanding before you sign it. What to ask anyone who turns up uninvited.

The short version

Contain it with something bigger than a bucket, relieve a bulging ceiling from the side or stay out of the room, and stay off the roof until the storm passes. Film the water coming in. Whether it is covered depends on whether the storm made the opening, so photograph the roof damage as well as the stain.