What is a storm chaser in roofing?
A crew that follows storms from market to market — a normal business model, and also the label homeowners use for the ones who disappear after the check clears.
Storm chasing means traveling to where the damage is instead of waiting for it locally. Plenty of legitimate restoration companies do it, because hail is seasonal and geographic and a good crew can only work what actually got hit.
The word carries a bad smell because of a minority: out-of-state operations that knock hard, sign cheap, subcontract the work, and are unreachable when a warranty issue shows up two winters later. Consumer-protection offices publish warnings about them after every major storm, so homeowners have often read one before you knock.
The practical answer is to knock like a company that plans to stay. Local phone number, verifiable license and insurance, a real warranty, and documentation the homeowner keeps a copy of. “We were already working three streets over” beats “we came in for the storm” every time.