How to Protect Your Car From Hail Damage in Calgary?
If you are driving your car in the middle of a rainstorm, you will need to keep your eyes on more than just the wet roads. You might also want to keep your eye on the skies above. Why? Because any minute now, if the weather is bad enough or the season is right, hail might start falling. Hails are frozen pellets of rainwater that fall from rain or cumulonimbus clouds.
These things vary in size, so you can’t really tell if they will be small or big. So, how can you protect your car from hail damage? Well, that’s what we will discuss in this article.
How Bad Can Hail Damage Be?
Living in a place with heavy rain seasons means you see more hail than you’d like. States like Texas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming in the United States experience about seven to nine hail storms per year.
Hailstorms can happen anywhere, not just in the US. Whether you are in Canada (especially Calgary), China, Russia, India, or northern Italy, you might face a hailstorm and possible car hail damage.
Hail storms often hit when it’s least convenient for car owners. Even though there are alerts for impending storms, many people are out running errands far from their home garage when the hail hits.
Between 2008 and 2014, US insurers paid about $5.37 billion for auto insurance claims due to hail damage.
That’s a lot of money for not having protection from ice pellets. Unfortunately, hail is a natural disaster and can’t be stopped. Hailstones are very damaging.
They come in different sizes and can cause various types of car damage. Aside from chips your car might also need windshield crack repair if the damage is severe enough.
If your car has been damaged by hail and needs servicing, please contact our help line. We have friendly service representatives standing by to answer any questions you might have.
How to Protect Your Car From Hail Damage?
The first step to preventing damage to your car is information. Getting a heads-up about an incoming hailstorm might provide enough time to pull your car into the nearest carport or any other shelter.
While weather reports are sometimes inaccurate, it doesn’t hurt to act to protect yourself. But what if you have no time to prepare? Below, we have provided method to defend your car against hail damage.
Buy a Car Cover
A car cover is a great investment for protecting your car from hail. It’s a thick, often padded fabric that can be quickly thrown over your car during a storm. Car covers are supposed to fit your car perfectly, leaving no part exposed.
Some are even inflatable, creating a protective bubble around your car. While inflatable covers are more expensive, they offer excellent protection and can be powered by your car battery.
Use Blankets
Only some have a car cover handy, but we have an alternative for you. Bring out your blankets, quilts, and comforters because they can do an excellent job of reducing hail damage on your car.
The thicker the blankets, quilts, or comforters, the better the protection. Place them over the most fragile parts of the car like the windshield, sunroof, and windows.
Please keep them in place using the storm with duct tape. While it might be as good as a car cover, your blankets, quilts, and comforters will do the job in a pinch.
Use Moving Blankets
Moving blankets like those used for furniture padding are another good alternative for protecting your car from hail damage.
These moving blankets are useful because they do a good job of absorbing shock. So, during hail storms they can be laid over your car’s vulnerable spots and absorb the hail damage quite well.
These moving blankets are also quite affordable, so they are a cheaper alternative to car covers and other blankets or comforters. Therefore, you should keep some in your car just in case of emergencies.
Use Floor Mats
Caught in a hailstorm without a car cover or blankets? Floor mats can help. Thick, rubbery floor mats offer good protection, especially for the glass parts of your car. Place the mats on your windshield and windows with the spiky side down for better grip.
While you can’t cover your entire car with floor mats, protecting the fragile parts can make a big difference.
Use Cardboard
Cardboard might not seem like a strong protection, but it can help in a pinch. Flatten some cardboard boxes and place them on your car. Weigh them down with heavy objects to keep them in place.
Cardboard can be combined with blankets or floor mats for extra protection. Remember that wet cardboard won’t be as effective, so use it with other materials if possible.
Use Potting Soil
Bags of potting soil might not be the first thing you think of for car protection, but they can be effective. The thick bags can help prevent hail from damaging the fragile parts of your car, like the sunroof, windshield, and rear windows.
Place the bags on these areas to provide a cushion against the hail. While this won’t protect your entire car, it can help save the most vulnerable parts.
What to Do to Keep Your Car Safe During Hail?
Keeping your car safe during a hailstorm involves more than just finding shelter. Small actions can make a big difference in keeping you and your car safe. Here’s how you can protect your car when hail strikes.
Find Cover
The best way to protect your car from hail is to find cover. Although that’s ideal, this means more than parking in a garage or carport.
It also means using any building or structure you can park next to. Hail usually falls at an angle due to the wind, so parking on the side of a building opposite to the wind can help.
Avoid parking under trees because branches can break and cause more damage. Also, try to avoid parking under bridges since they can get crowded with other cars seeking shelter.
Pull Over
Driving during a hail storm is stupid for several reasons. One major reason is that if you are driving, then the hail will hit your car more quickly. This can lead to worse car damage, maybe even injury to the driver or passengers.
That’s why we recommend you pull over your car and park it somewhere. The windshields of a car are meant not to shatter easily.
So keeping your car neutral and pulling over should be enough to ensure you are safe and your car isn’t damaged too badly.
Get Insurance
Yes, we know this advice seems weird, but there is a way to deal with our madness. No matter what you do you can’t be safe from everything. This is especially true during a rain or hail storm. Weather is unpredictable so don’t bother trying to predict it.
Instead, take out proper car insurance to ensure that whatever bad thing happens, you are insured against it. We recommend insurance that provides full coverage. This will reduce the possible repair cost you might get hit with.
Repair Hail Damage with Stealth Windshield Repair
You should make repairs if and when you damage your car from hail falling on it. In most cases, the damage will be on the car’s windshield and back glass, so that’s where you should focus. For the best windshield chip repair in Calgary, we highly recommend that you come to us.
Stealth windshields repairs is mobile and available at various times, so contact us to repair your car’s windshields at affordable rates.
Conclusion
As you can see, protecting your car from hail damage can be easy or hard depending on the situation. With the ideas we have shared you should have an easier time keeping your car free of hail damage even during bad hail storms.
In the worst case scenarios where your car is damaged from hail we recommend you contact stealth windshield repairs to ensure your car is properly repaired. Our expert windshield repair team will make it seem like your windshields weren’t even damaged after they are done with your car.
Read More: How To Clean Car Windshield From Inside And Outside In Canada?