NOAA's National Weather Service and Storm Prediction Center publish free, publicly accessible storm reports that roofing and restoration contractors can use to track weather events in their territories. Understanding what NOAA provides — and where its limitations are for business development purposes — helps contractors use it correctly alongside commercial services like HailTrace that provide more operationally useful data.
What NOAA Publishes
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center at spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports publishes daily storm reports including hail events with size measurements, locations, dates and times, and source (spotter report, radar estimate, or NWS office). These reports are updated throughout the day and are publicly accessible at no cost. The NOAA Local Storm Reports (LSR) database is accessible via API, enabling automated polling for new events in specific states or counties. This is a legitimate free alternative to HailTrace for contractors who are willing to build their own parsing layer.
NOAA's Limitations for Commercial Storm Lead Generation
NOAA storm reports are point-based — they tell you that 1.75-inch hail was reported at a specific location but do not provide the storm swath polygon (the boundary of the entire affected area). Building a property list requires knowing the full geographic extent of damage, not just a single report point. HailTrace's meteorologist-verified swath polygons fill this gap — they are built from NOAA data but post-processed to produce the GeoJSON boundaries required for automated property targeting. For contractors building an automated pipeline, NOAA provides the detection signal and HailTrace provides the polygon for property targeting. The full system using both sources is demonstrated at omnionlinestrategies.com/storm-lead-ai-machine.