Our data
Every alert traces back to a named federal source.
HailHawk does not generate weather data. NOAA does, with a radar network and a spotter corps no private company can match, published as public record. Our work is everything after. We watch the feeds around the clock, match each report against your customer book and your history with every address, and turn the result into a ranked call list. Here is what we read, and how.
Human-confirmed spotter reports
NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports
Trained storm spotters and local officials report hail as it falls, with a time, a location, and a measured size. This is the sparsest feed. Most hail falls with nobody credentialed watching. Every report in it was confirmed by a person on the ground. When a spotter report lands near one of your customers, that is as close to a certainty as storm data offers.
spc.noaa.gov ↗Doppler radar detections, storm by storm
NOAA NCEI Severe Weather Data Inventory radar hail signatures
Each NEXRAD weather radar runs a hail-detection algorithm that flags the signature hail makes aloft and estimates maximum stone size. It sees far more than spotters do, including storms at 2 a.m. over empty streets, at the cost of being an estimate rather than an observation. HailHawk ingests detections of one inch and larger, the size that starts breaking shingles.
ncei.noaa.gov ↗The national verification grid, next day
NOAA MRMS Maximum Estimated Size of Hail (MESH)
The Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor system merges every radar in the country into one national grid and estimates the largest hail that reached the ground at each point. It is published as a completed picture the following day, which is why HailHawk runs it as a verification pass: it confirms and sizes what the live feeds caught, fills in what they missed, and is the same class of product insurance adjusters use when they evaluate a claim.
nssl.noaa.gov ↗How the matching works
- Hourly, around the clock. The live feeds are re-read every hour. New reports are deduplicated against everything already seen, so a storm re-served by NOAA never re-alerts anyone.
- Matched by distance, per customer. Each report is compared against every geocoded customer address you have. The match radius is yours to set. It defaults to one mile, tight enough that “under the hail” means it.
- Corroboration is scored. A roof flagged by one source is a lead; a roof where spotters, radar, and the national grid all agree is the hot zone. The dashboard shows which sources back every single match.
- Evidence is kept. Every alert stores the report it came from (source, size, time, and measured distance to the roof). That is what the one-click claim evidence report is built from.
NOAA data is public domain and credited here as a courtesy. NOAA does not endorse HailHawk or any commercial product. Weather data has inherent uncertainty. Radar estimates are estimates, which is why sources are always named and corroboration is always shown.