Talk to an Expert 504-688-3797
Talk to an Expert 504-688-3797
Once the weather has passed and it is safe to be outside, most people walk the property to see what happened. Gutters are worth including in that walk, because storm damage to a gutter system is easy to miss and easy to underestimate.
They sit at the roof edge, which is where wind loads are highest, and they are usually the thing a falling branch hits first. They also fill with whatever the storm brought down, and a gutter full of wet debris is carrying weight it was never designed to hold.
The catch is that the roofline is exactly where people get hurt checking. Storm ground is soft, gutters are at height, and a system that has been damaged may not hold what it looks like it will hold.
At Big Easy Gutters, we would rather you found the problem from the ground and called someone than found it from a ladder. This is how to do that.
If your walk turns up anything you are not sure about, contact us about storm damage to your gutters and we will come and look at it.
The principle for everything below: nothing about a gutter is worth a fall. Every check here is done with your feet on the ground, and anything that cannot be assessed that way is a reason to get someone out rather than a reason to climb.
Not a repair diagnosis. A triage.
The question after a storm is narrower than a general inspection: did anything move, did anything break, and is anything now unsafe or actively making things worse. Those three are answerable from the ground with a bit of patience.
Some findings need attention before the next rain. A section hanging loose, a downspout separated and dumping against the wall, or debris and water weight holding a run out of position are all working against the house right now.
Others can wait for a scheduled visit. A dent, a slightly bent hanger or a small amount of debris are worth reporting but are not doing damage while they wait. Knowing which is which is most of the value of the walk.
The reason this distinction matters is timing. After a significant storm, everyone in the area is calling at once, and the honest position is that work gets scheduled rather than materializing instantly. Knowing which of your findings genuinely cannot wait means the conversation starts in the right place, and it means you are not sitting on something that is quietly making the next rain worse.
Before anything else. Not while wind is still gusting, not while there is standing water you cannot see the bottom of, and not in the dark.
Look up before you look around. Any downed line, or any line that looks lower than it should be, means you keep well clear and call the utility rather than making a judgment about it. The same goes for anything touching or near a line, including a branch resting on one.
This is not a formality. The property has changed, people move quickly once the weather clears, and the combination is where avoidable injuries come from.
A few things are worth checking about the ground itself before you start walking. Saturated soil gives under weight in a way dry ground does not, which matters anywhere you would normally stand close to the house. Debris hides holes, and a yard that was flat yesterday may not be today. And anything that has come down, from a branch to a section of gutter, may be under tension or resting on something else rather than simply lying there.
Wear something on your feet that will survive standing on a nail. It is a common yard injury after a storm and an entirely preventable one.
Start at a corner and walk the whole way around, looking at the roofline as you go. Stand back far enough to actually see it, which usually means further from the house than feels natural.
What you are checking on that first pass: whether the gutter line still looks straight, whether any section is hanging, sagging or detached, whether downspouts are still attached top and bottom, whether anything is resting on or in the gutter, and whether there is debris on the ground that used to be part of the system.
Take photos as you go, one of each elevation and one of anything that looks wrong. They are useful to whoever comes out, and they record the state of things on the day.
If you have photos from before the storm, compare them. Few people photograph their gutters deliberately, but there are usually incidental shots of the house from other occasions, and a photo taken for a completely different reason can settle whether something is new damage or has been like that for years.
Binoculars or a phone camera at full zoom are worth using on the second pass. They will not tell you the condition of a fixing, but they will let you see whether a bracket has moved, whether a joint has opened, or whether something is sitting in the run, all without leaving the ground.
Downspouts take a beating in wind because they stand proud of the wall.
From the ground, look at whether each downspout is still connected at the top, still fixed to the wall along its length, still joined at each section, and still discharging where it used to. A downspout that has come away at the top is the one to flag first, because the water now has nowhere to go but down the wall.
Look at the base as well. If an extension has been pushed out of place or is buried under storm debris, water from the next rain will discharge right at the foundation.
This one is worth acting on the same day where you safely can, because it is among the findings most likely to cause further damage and it is the easiest to put right. Moving a displaced extension back into position or clearing debris away from the discharge point is ground-level work, and it buys you protection until someone can look at the rest properly.
Draw the line clearly though. Anything higher than you can comfortably reach standing on the ground, including the connection where the downspout meets the gutter, is for someone working at height. The temptation after a storm is to deal with it while you are out there, and that is exactly the moment the ground is softest and the system is least predictable.
This is the check most people skip and it is the one that tells you the most.
Walk the walls under the gutter line and look for fresh streaking, splashback marks near the base, saturated ground in a line rather than a spread, or a patch of wall noticeably wetter than the rest. Those are signs water came over or out of the system during the storm rather than going through it.
Fresh marks on a wall are the clearest evidence you will get that a gutter failed under load, and unlike a bent bracket they tell you it actually mattered.
Look inside as well as outside, particularly along any wall where you saw evidence. Fresh staining on an interior wall or ceiling near the roofline, or a damp patch that was not there last week, changes the priority considerably and is worth mentioning to whoever comes out.
You do not need to get up there to find out whether the system is working. You need it to rain again.
When it does, go out and watch. Water going over the front edge, out of a joint, behind the gutter, or running down a wall means something is wrong regardless of how the system looks on a dry day. A downspout that produces no flow while its neighbors are running is blocked.
It is one of the most useful checks available to a homeowner and it costs nothing but getting wet. It is also what separates cosmetic storm damage from the kind that needs fixing.
Watch the whole run rather than one spot. Water finds the lowest point, so a section that has been knocked out of alignment will usually reveal itself somewhere other than where the impact was. That is also why a system can look untouched from one elevation and be clearly failing from another.
Do the same check at the discharge end. A downspout running strongly at the top and producing nothing at the bottom has a blockage somewhere in between, which after a storm is usually exactly what you would expect it to be.
Everything above stops at ground level, deliberately. What it cannot tell you is the condition of the fixings, the state of the fascia behind the gutter, whether a joint has opened, or what is sitting inside the run.
Those need someone who is set up to work at height, and after a storm they need it more than usual, because a gutter that has taken a hit may not be carrying what it appears to be carrying. Leaning a ladder against a damaged gutter is a specific and avoidable way to get hurt.
There is a second reason to hand it over rather than take a look yourself. A gutter that survived the storm structurally can still have moved enough to lose its fall, and fall is measured rather than eyeballed. Standing at the top of a ladder looking along a run will not tell you that, so the trip carries the risk without producing the answer.
The same goes for what is inside. A run that looks clear from below can hold a compacted mass of debris at the outlet, and the only useful way to establish that is from above with the right equipment.
If your walk turned up anything on the urgent list, or the next rain showed water going where it should not, that is the point to call rather than to investigate further yourself.
When you do call, the useful things to have ready are your photos, which elevation each one is from, what you saw in the next rain, and anything you already moved or cleared. That turns a vague description into something that can be scoped before anyone arrives.
And if the storm brought a lot of tree debris down, it is worth thinking past the immediate damage to the maintenance interval. We covered what the local tree cover does to a gutter system in our piece on live oak and magnolia debris.
A post-storm gutter check is a short job done from the ground, and it is worth doing even when nothing looks obviously wrong, because the damage that matters is often the damage that does not announce itself.
Walk the perimeter, look at the downspouts, check the walls for water evidence, and watch what happens in the next rain. Photograph anything that looks off. Then hand the list to someone who can get up there safely and tell you what it means.
None of that takes long, and the value is in doing it while the evidence is fresh. Water marks dry, debris gets cleared, and a week later the story is harder to read than it was on the day.
For what gutter damage looks like more generally, our page on signs of gutter damage covers the wider picture, and this post has stayed on the post-storm walk.
Here at Big Easy Gutters, we handle gutter repair across the New Orleans area. Call us at (504) 688-3797 with what you found and we will come and look at it.
Not from a ladder, and not from the roof. Debris on the ground is fine to pick up, but anything in the gutter itself means working at height on a system that may have been damaged, which is exactly the situation to hand over rather than take on.
As soon as it is genuinely safe to be outside and you can see what you are walking on. The reason for not leaving it is that a damaged gutter keeps causing problems with every rain that follows, so the sooner it is on someone’s list the less water goes where it should not.
Stay out from under it and get it looked at rather than trying to secure it yourself. A section that is partly detached is carrying its own weight plus whatever is in it, and it is unpredictable.
Not reliably from the ground, which is one of the main reasons to have someone come out. What you can do is note any staining, sagging or gaps you can see and pass that on, since it helps whoever inspects know where to look first.
If the storm was significant, yes, because fixings and joints can be affected without anything being visible from below. The next-rain test in step 5 is a good first filter, and anything it turns up is worth a proper look.
By Admin 
Sep 14, 2026