Storm Damage to Your Car Glass: What To Do

Updated October 2026 · BL Auto Glass · Serving Central Florida

Comprehensive covers it. The harder problem is that everyone needs glass the same week, so the useful moves are the ones you make early.

The short answer

Storm damage to auto glass is comprehensive, not collision. A branch through the rear screen, hail on the windshield, debris through a door window: all comprehensive. In Florida the deductible is waived for windshield damage under Statute 627.7288. Side and rear glass carry your normal deductible.

Document it before you clean anything up, then call. 407-388-4718.

The first hour

Order matters, because two of these cannot be done later.

1. Photograph everything before you touch it. Wide shots showing the car and what hit it, then close-ups of each piece of damage. If a branch is still in the glass, photograph it in place.
2. Get the interior covered. Florida storms travel in packs, and the second band will do more damage to a soaked interior than the first did to the glass. Plastic sheeting taped to the outside of the frame, pulled tight.
3. Then clear the glass and vacuum the seats and carpet.
4. Then call. Insurer or glass shop, either order, but have the photos first.

The water is the part people underestimate. Soaked seat foam and carpet underlay in this climate grows mould within days, and that is a far bigger bill than the glass.

Which coverage pays

Comprehensive is the one that handles weather. It covers falling objects, hail, flying debris and flooding, which is essentially the whole storm damage category.

Two things worth knowing about how it behaves around named storms:

• Hurricane deductibles are a property insurance thing, not an auto thing. The separate, percentage-based hurricane deductible that applies to your house does not apply to your car. Auto comprehensive uses its normal flat deductible, and Florida still waives it for windshields.
• Binding restrictions apply to adding coverage, not to claiming it. Insurers commonly stop writing new coverage once a storm is in the forecast cone. That prevents you buying comprehensive two days before landfall; it does not affect a claim on coverage you already had.

If you carry liability only, storm glass damage is out of pocket. Worth checking which you have before hurricane season rather than during it.

Why glass gets scarce after a storm

Honest expectation setting, because this is the part that frustrates people.

A significant storm damages thousands of vehicles across a region in a few hours, and every one of them calls in the same week. Regional glass distribution runs on normal weekly demand, so common windshields go first and unusual specifications take longer. Mobile installers are working through a queue that does not reset for a while.

What helps: call early, even if you are not ready to schedule, so the correct glass for your vehicle can be located. Have your year, make, model and which glass is damaged ready. And be realistic about a rare specification, because a heads-up display windshield for a low-volume trim is not sitting in a warehouse down the road.

What actually protects a parked car

Most of what circulates online does not work.

Taping an X on the glass does nothing. This is a house-window myth that migrated to cars, and it did not work on houses either. It does not strengthen the glass and it does not hold fragments.

Covers and blankets help against hail, not against impact. A thick moving blanket over the windshield absorbs some hail energy. Nothing you drape over a car stops a branch.

What genuinely helps, in order:

• Park under structure. A garage, a parking deck, anything with a roof. This is the whole game.
• Failing that, park away from trees. Most storm glass damage in Central Florida is falling branches, not hail.
• Not under power lines, palms or anything already leaning.
• Fix existing chips before the season. A chipped windshield fails under hail and pressure that intact glass shrugs off. This is the cheapest thing on the list and the most overlooked.

After the storm

Check the glass properly once the weather clears, including the parts you do not look at. Rear screens and quarter glass take debris hits that go unnoticed until the defroster fails or water appears in the boot.

Look for new chips on the windshield too. A storm week is when a lot of them appear, and a chip found now is a repair rather than a replacement in a month.

We work across Central Florida and we come to the car, which matters when the car should not be driven. 407-388-4718.