Two separate questions get merged into one every time hail and metal come up in St. Louis. Will it leak, and will it look wrecked. The answers point in opposite directions, and the second answer depends on a clause in your policy that you should read before you spend the money, not after the storm.
Leaks: metal holds up well
A hailstone damages an asphalt shingle by fracturing the mat and knocking granules off the surface, which exposes the asphalt underneath to sun and starts a clock. The damage is often not a hole. It is a bruise that shortens the shingle's remaining life, which is why hail claims on shingle roofs turn into whole roof replacements so often.
A standing seam panel does not work that way. It is a continuous sheet of coated steel or aluminium, fully supported by a solid deck underneath, and it has no granules to lose. Hail that would end an asphalt roof will usually leave a correctly installed metal roof watertight. That is a genuine advantage in this market and it is fair to weigh it.
The qualifier is "correctly installed". Where hail does cause water trouble on metal roofs it is nearly always at the details rather than in the field: at a penetration, at a sealed lap, at trim, or on an exposed fastener roof where the stone lands on a screw head and disturbs the washer around it. The field of a standing seam panel is the strongest part of the assembly.
Dents: metal takes them, and your policy may not pay
Metal dents. A large stone striking a flat panel puts a permanent dimple in it, and because the panel is a smooth reflective plane, dimples read from a long way off in raking light. A dented standing seam roof can be completely watertight and completely ruined to look at, on a house where looking good is the reason it was bought.
Insurance language has a category for exactly this: cosmetic damage, meaning damage that impairs appearance without impairing function. Many carriers now attach a cosmetic damage exclusion, sometimes called a cosmetic damage waiver, specifically to metal roof surfaces. Where that clause applies, dents are not a covered loss, and the sum you are told the roof is insured for does not include putting the dents right.
None of this means do not buy metal. It means know what you are buying. If your reason for choosing standing seam is a long low pitched section that keeps leaking, a cosmetic exclusion matters far less. If your reason is that it will look sharp from the kerb for decades, the exclusion is directly aimed at your reason.
What the hail record here actually says, and what it does not
| County | Logged events | Note |
|---|---|---|
| St. Louis County | 125 | Largest reported stone 2.5 inches. Average reported stone about 1.32 inches. |
| St. Charles County | 54 | Same reporting caveats apply. |
| Jefferson County | 44 | Same reporting caveats apply. |
| Franklin County | 30 | Same reporting caveats apply. |
Source: NOAA Storm Events hail reports, 2020 to 2025, aggregated by county. These are counts of LOGGED REPORTS. They are not insured losses, not damaged roofs, and not a measure of how hard any one address was hit. A report exists because somebody observed hail and reported it, so reporting density follows population density: a heavily populated county generates more reports than a rural one under identical weather. St. Louis County is the most populated county in the state, and its leading position in this table partly reflects that.
Two more figures worth carrying, with their sources named. April and May together account for roughly 56 percent of the metro's annual hail reports, per NOAA Storm Prediction Center climatology for the local forecast area, so the season is short and concentrated rather than spread across the year. And the Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance reported 253,241 catastrophic claims from the 2025 season with more than 2.9 billion dollars paid, roughly 83 percent of it residential.
What all of that supports is a simple statement: this is a hail market, and any roofing material you choose here will meet hail. It does not support a claim that a metal roof will or will not be paid for after a given storm. That depends on your policy wording, which is a question for the people who wrote it.
Plank decking, oil canning, high temperature underlayment and the permit the decking triggers by itself.