In this article · 5 sections
A dealership cannot put its whole lot under a roof. What it can do, with warning, is decide which cars go under cover, which people go inside and which trucks stay put. This playbook is a starting order you can adapt. The decisions in it are best made on a clear day, before the alert arrives.
What a damaging-class alert tells you
Predictive Hail forecasts hail up to 55 minutes before it reaches a site, on 1×1 km cells refreshed every five minutes. Each alert names a size class and an arrival time, so the lot is not reacting to a vague "hail possible". The damaging class means stones of 1.00 inch and up, the size the National Weather Service uses as its severe-hail criterion and the point at which it says significant property damage begins. Fleet managers are among the people Flash alerts at this class.
- 55 minlead time, up to
- 1×1 kmcell the stones will land on
- 5 minmodel refresh
- ≥1.00 indamaging class
The destructive class, 2.00 inches and up, is a different message. NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory estimates that stones of 2 to 4 inches fall at roughly 44 to 72 mph. At that size the alert goes to everyone on site, and the first job is getting people indoors.
Before the season: decide it once
- Map your sites. Register the main lot, any overflow or storage lots and the service drive as separate sites. Each sits in its own cell, and a storm can hit one without touching another.
- Count your cover. Service bays, a covered delivery area, a parking structure: write down how many vehicles fit under each, and keep that number current as inventory changes.
- Rank what moves first. Decide in advance which vehicles get the covered spaces. Customer cars in for service, sold units waiting for delivery and the highest-value stock are obvious candidates. The point is that nobody debates it while the storm builds.
- Name the people. Decide who receives the alert, who has the keys, and who decides when to stop moving cars. Alerts arrive by app, SMS and email, and can trigger horn and strobe relays.
- Set the trigger. Damaging class is a natural trigger for moving vehicles, because it matches the size the NWS ties to property damage. Destructive class is the trigger for getting everyone inside.
When the alert arrives: the order of operations
- 1 · People
- Check the class and the arrival time. If the alert is destructive, everyone goes indoors and the moving stops. NSSL notes that wind-driven hail can break side windows on cars and cause severe injury, so a car is not shelter at that size. Stop moving vehicles well before the stated arrival time, because the window is a forecast and storms do not keep appointments.
- 2 · The service bay
- Customer vehicles are not your inventory. Pull every car waiting for service, or waiting to be picked up, into the bays or under cover first. Then close the bay doors.
- 3 · The lot
- Fill the remaining covered spaces in the order you set before the season. Everything else stays where it is: a car moved out in the open is no better protected, and the people moving it are the ones in the open.
- 4 · The delivery truck
- A loaded car carrier cannot go under cover, so the decision is about the road. Hold departures into the cell, and check whether a truck already on the road is heading into it. NSSL warns that hail covering a road can keep tires from touching the pavement, so it behaves like ice.
The window
Up to 55 minutes to stage the lot, not to file the dents.
After the storm: the record
Flash records predicted and observed hail at 1×1 km resolution with timestamps, updated every five minutes through the event. That gives you, and your insurer, a dated record of which cell took which size class and when, instead of an estimate pieced together afterwards. Hail falls in swaths, which NSSL says can range from a few acres to an area 10 miles wide and 100 miles long, so the record is also how you tell whether the overflow lot across town was hit too.
The trade press covered the Predictive Hail launch for fleet operators, among them Automotive Fleet, and the coverage is listed on the press page. The product specification is on the hail prediction page.
Frequently asked
Predictive Hail forecasts hail up to 55 minutes before it reaches a site, refreshed every five minutes, with the size class and the 1×1 km cell it will land on.
The National Weather Service treats hail of 1 inch or larger as severe and as the point where significant property damage begins. Predictive Hail calls that the damaging class.
No. Predictive Hail is software only, delivered by app, SMS, email, horn and strobe relays and the API, and it covers the continental U.S.
No. Once hail is falling, people come first. NSSL notes that wind-driven hail can break car side windows and cause severe injury, so moving should stop before the stated arrival time.