# What Size Hail Damages a Car? | DG Collision > Quarter-size (1 inch) hail dents steel hoods and roofs; penny-size can mark aluminum; tennis-ball and up cracks glass. The full damage ladder, panel by panel. - Canonical page: https://dgcollision.com/answers/what-size-hail-damages-a-car/ - This file: Markdown twin of the page above (clean text for AI assistants and crawlers) - Business: DG Collision Center, 693 Metro Park Cir #20, Lewisville, TX 75057 — (972) 219-0864 (text: 817-907-2822) — since 1978 - Hours: Mon–Fri 8:30am–5:30pm, Sat 10am–1pm, closed Sunday · 24/7 towing · 4.9/5 on 500+ Google reviews - Full site index for assistants: https://dgcollision.com/llms.txt - Last generated: 2026-08-14 --- # WHAT SIZE HAIL DAMAGES A CAR? Quick Answer Quarter size — one inch — is the practical threshold where steel hoods, roofs and decklids start collecting dents; soft aluminum panels can mark at penny size. Golf-ball (1.75″) and hen-egg (2.00″) stones reach vertical panels and split trim; at tennis-ball size and up (2.50″+), windshields crack and paint breaks on impact. And duration multiplies everything — several minutes of quarters can out-damage one burst of golf balls. By [Shah Jiwani](https://dgcollision.com/about/shah-jiwani/) · Owner, DG Collision Center Updated September 23, 2026 3 min read I-CAR Gold Class · PPG Certified The Longer Answer ## THE SIZE LADDER, PANEL BY PANEL Hail damage scales with three things — stone size, what the panel is made of, and how long the stones kept coming. Pea and dime hail (under 0.75″) usually leaves steel untouched, though a long soak of it can freckle soft aluminum. Penny to nickel (0.75–0.9″) is the gray zone: steel typically shrugs it off, aluminum hoods and tailgates — standard on modern F-150s, Silverados and Sierras — can take shallow marks worth a raking-light check. Quarter size (1.00″) is where the National Weather Service’s severe threshold and the body shop’s reality agree: horizontal steel starts denting, reliably. From there the ladder steepens. Half dollar to ping-pong (1.25–1.50″) dents any horizontal panel and starts finding hood edges. Golf ball (1.75″) reaches vertical surfaces — doors, fenders — splits mirror caps and trim, and marks aluminum deeply enough that repair technique starts to matter (aluminum work-hardens; it wants slow, warm PDR, not force). Hen egg (2.00″) does all of that at depth. Tennis ball and beyond (2.50″+) is the glass-and-paint tier: broken windshields, cracked finishes, stretched metal — the class where [total-loss math](https://dgcollision.com/guides/will-hail-damage-total-my-car/) enters the room on older vehicles. Two honest footnotes from the storm log. First, duration is the quiet killer: a hood that survives thirty seconds of golf balls can be exhausted by eight minutes of quarters — when we read a storm’s reports, we look at time spans, not just the biggest stone. Second, damage hides: shallow dents from inch-class hail routinely go unnoticed until low-angle light finds them at a car wash or a trade-in appraisal. If your area took anything at quarter size or better — DFW logs those days constantly; the pattern lives in our [hail season data guide](https://dgcollision.com/guides/dfw-hail-season/) and our [storm-by-storm log](https://dgcollision.com/hail-storms/) — a free raking-light inspection settles the question for nothing. Related Questions ## ASKED ALONGSIDE THIS ONE Can pea-size hail damage a car? + A: Steel panels, essentially never. Aluminum panels, occasionally — a sustained fall of small stones can leave faint marks on hoods and tailgates that only show under angled light. If the car is aluminum-bodied and the hail kept coming for minutes, a quick check costs nothing. Why don’t I see dents even though the hail was big? + A: Because overhead light hides shallow dents — they read as clean panel until light rakes across at a low angle. That’s why so much hail damage is “discovered” at car washes and trade-ins, and why professional inspection uses PDR lighting rather than a parking-lot glance. Does a storm report’s hail size tell me my car’s damage? + A: It tells you what fell where someone measured — storm reports are point samples, not maps. Your street may have taken bigger or smaller stones than the logged pin a mile away. The report tells you whether to look; the panel tells you what happened. Is aluminum hail damage harder to fix than steel? + A: It demands more patience: aluminum work-hardens, so dents release with slow, warm technique where steel’s metal memory cooperates readily. It’s entirely repairable done right — the truck-specific story is on our [F-150 hail page](https://dgcollision.com/f150-hail-damage-repair/) and its [Silverado & Sierra twin](https://dgcollision.com/silverado-sierra-hail-damage-repair/). Go Deeper [DFW hail season data](https://dgcollision.com/guides/dfw-hail-season/) · [The storm log](https://dgcollision.com/hail-storms/) · [Hail damage repair](https://dgcollision.com/services/hail-damage-repair/) · [PDR vs body shop](https://dgcollision.com/guides/pdr-vs-body-shop/)