Weather ReportingBuilt ToWithstand Scrutiny.
Forensic-grade hail and severe weather analysis for insurance claims — backed by named, reproducible government datasets and a methodology transparent enough for any deposition.
Black-box data loses in court.
Commercial weather products are built on proprietary algorithms — convenient for claims processing, catastrophic when a plaintiff's attorney asks how the number was derived.
Standard Industry Approach
Proprietary Models & Black-Box Scores
Many weather data products in the insurance industry derive their scores from undisclosed algorithms. When deposed, the expert cannot name an underlying source — only a vendor product. That distinction can matter enormously to a federal judge evaluating expert methodology.
Courts have excluded weather expert testimony where methodology was not independently verifiable
Named Sources. Reproducible Methods. No Secrets.
Severe Weather Intelligence™
Every data point in an SWI report traces back to a publicly accessible, peer-reviewed government dataset. The interpolation methodology is documented step by step. Any qualified expert can replicate the analysis independently.
Built from the ground up for Daubert compliance
Five layers of corroborating evidence.
SWI doesn't rely on a single data stream. Each report synthesizes four independent government data sources with Trinity's own empirical data layer into a single, unified forensic finding.
NOAA Storm Events Database
On-the-Ground Event Records
The gold standard in forensic evidence: on-site, PE-verified empirical data collected across thousands of inspections by Trinity's qualified forensic engineers. Hail dents and spatter, collateral wind and hail damage, and impact damage to roofing materials — all documented in person, at the property. Radar can be inconsistent, and some counties have coverage gaps where no trained spotters are nearby; ground-truth field data fills those gaps. This proprietary layer is the defensibility core of Severe Weather Intelligence™.
NOAA NEXRAD Level-3 HDA — SWDI
Doppler Radar Corroboration
A 10-year NEXRAD Level-3 Hail Detection Algorithm dataset — over 7.2 million radar-derived hail detections across the contiguous U.S. — pulled directly from NOAA's Severe Weather Data Inventory. When a storm event is recorded on the ground, we cross-reference it against what 159 WSR-88D radar sites actually detected in the same grid cell at the same time.
ASOS Station Data — Visual Crossing API
Spatial Interpolation from Real Stations
Wind speed, temperature, and atmospheric conditions at the property are estimated using Inverse Distance Weighting interpolation across nearby Automated Surface Observing System stations — real physical instruments, not modeled data. IDW assigns weighted influence to each surrounding station based on distance, producing a defensible site-specific estimate with a documented confidence metric.
NOAA SPC — Storm Prediction Center
Mesoscale Discussion Corroboration
SPC Mesoscale Discussions are issued by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center when atmospheric conditions are evolving toward organized severe weather. Each SWI report retrieves and links any MCDs active on the date of loss — providing a fifth, independent government-issued confirmation that severe weather conditions were present at the regional scale.
Trinity Engineering on-site inspection data
PE-Verified Empirical Evidence
The gold standard in forensic evidence: on-site, PE-verified empirical data collected across thousands of inspections by Trinity's qualified forensic engineers. Hail dents and spatter, collateral wind and hail damage, and impact damage to roofing materials - all documented in person, at the property. Radar can be inconsistent, and some counties have coverage gaps where no trained spotters are nearby; ground-truth field data fills those gaps. This proprietary layer is the defensibility core of Severe Weather Intelligence™.
Built for the deposition room,not just the desk.
The Federal Rules of Evidence require that expert testimony be based on sufficient facts or data and a reliable methodology. SWI was designed with those exact standards in mind — every number has a citation, every methodology has a name.
Independent government data sources per report
NEXRAD radar archive accessed per analysis
Radar hail detections in our corroboration database
Proprietary black-box scores — every input is named
“The expert cannot merely assert that a black box produced the number. Under Daubert, the court must be able to evaluate the underlying methodology.”
Every source, named and public.
SWI reports include a full data provenance section listing each source by name, access method, and retrieval date. Any opposing expert can independently verify the inputs.
National Weather Service verified ground-truth records of all severe weather events, including hail diameter, location, and time. Publicly downloadable at ncdc.noaa.gov.
Level-3 Hail Detection Algorithm output from the WSR-88D NEXRAD network, accessed via NOAA's Severe Weather Data Inventory REST API.
Hourly surface observations from FAA/NOAA Automated Surface Observing Stations, retrieved via Visual Crossing's historical weather API with timestamped station IDs.
Iowa Environmental Mesonet Local Storm Reports — timestamped ground-truth observations submitted by NWS-trained spotters and emergency managers, providing human-verified corroboration of storm events at the surface level.
Storm Prediction Center Mesoscale Discussions — government-issued severe weather assessments retrieved for the date of loss and linked directly in each report.
Get Started
Request a forensicweather report.
SWI reports are produced by Trinity Engineering as a professional service — not a downloadable app. Contact us with a property address and date of loss, and we'll deliver a defensible, citation-backed forensic weather analysis.
Contact Trinity Engineering