MONROE — Repair and estimate crews were out in force on a cloudy Monday morning, days after a Friday-morning storm dropped up-to-baseball-sized hail on a good portion of southwest and southern Wisconsin, including in parts of Green and Lafayette Counties; and as far away as Grant County.

“I was just up in Evansville, and there were maybe 40 different companies there,” said Joey VanMatre of TruHome, a contractor in Green County, who was kept busy by the late-spring storm. “They are coming from all over the place, knocking on doors.”

He said the damage — most of the hail was described as golf-ball sized — was widespread across a band of Wisconsin, and so too was the proliferation of storm-chaser type contractors from out of the area.

VanMatre counseled homeowners to work closely with their insurance companies when agreeing to work — and try to work with local trades and contractors if possible. His work in the Evansville area, he said, took him only to homes of clients who first had contact with his business, instead of merely knocking on doors.

Jonathan Naylor, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s La Crosse office, said in published news accounts that the storm passed through southwest Wisconsin in the early hours of Friday morning, between 4 and 6 a.m.

“There was a little core of the storm that developed on the southern edge of Grant County and moved through Platteville, and it dropped some pretty robust hail,” he told The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald. 

Naylor added that the National Weather Service received had gotten reports of hail 2 inches or larger in diameter from throughout southwestern Wisconsin.

But the impact was spotty across the region, and the storm’s full cost likely will not come into view for weeks, experts say. According to online site HailTrace, the weather event in Wisconsin on April 18 included hail, wind, and tornados across nine states; with a total of 606 cities impacted and suffering possible damage. 

“The total estimated number of properties impacted is 57,172,” the service said.

HailTrace, which also offers coded maps to show hail-impacted areas, broke down the size of hail across the entire, nine-state “weather event” that included Wisconsin:

●  57,172 — estimated number of impacted properties by a 1.00” hail or larger

●  18,210 — estimated number of impacted properties by a 1.75” hail or larger

●  16,818 — Estimated number of impacted properties by a 2.50” hail or larger

Closer to home, hail as large as a golf ball also was spotted in areas as far away as Platteville and of course, hard-hit Evansville, where some of the larger hail damaged windows in the public library, in addition to cars, residential windows and rooftops.

While he said some windows did indeed get broken, the storm mostly hit rooftops, gutters, soffit, and fascia particularly hard

Prior to agreeing to work or even estimates, VanMatre emphasized how it is a good idea to check insurance policies to ensure the extent of the coverage and the amount of the deductible. Some policies only cover the actual cash value of the damage, whereas more complete policies cover the replacement value — at today’s costs — of the work and materials.

“There are cases where the deductible is a few hundred dollars or those where it’s $5,000,” said VanMatre. “Some companies might eat the few hundred, but the five thousand would be a problem and might mean your roof doesn’t get done.”