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Air Conditioning and Storms – Before and After
After the crazy hail storm last week, it begs the questions:
What kind of damage can a storm cause to my air conditioning unit?
What can I do to prevent damage to my air conditioning during a storm?
Living in Texas, we don’t always get the luxury of advance warning about the severity of a storm, or what the storm is going to bring. Hail? High winds? Electrical strikes? Never a dull moment with Texas weather.
The good news is that your outdoor unit is designed to take some abuse – it’s engineered to live outside after all. The same goes for window units – they are designed to extend outside from your windows.
The most common damage from a hail storm to be aware of is compression of the fins around your condenser. You start to lose cooling ability and energy efficiency (your SEER rating) when approximately 40% of the fins have become bent, restricting air flow. You can use a fin comb to straighten the fins which will solve the problem without costly repair fees.
During high winds that blow a large amount of debris into your unit, as well as a hail storm, your condenser unit can possibly be damaged enough to leak refrigerant (which can damage your compressor if not repaired quickly). The good news is that in most cases your outside unit would have to be pulverized by hail in order to damage the compressor – the most expensive component of your outside unit to replace. In the case of debris blown into the unit, the coils and the fan could possibly be affected, but since the compressor is inside the coils and fan, not enough is going to reach the compressor to damage it. If you are having issues, check the coils and fan to see if they need a good cleaning, and call a professional if you notice more damage than just debris clogging the unit that you can’t safely remove yourself.
What to do during wind and hail storms?
Should you turn off your air conditioner during a storm? If it’s a central air conditioning unit, do not turn it off. The unit is not drawing in air from the outside, but converting Freon into cool air, so high winds and debris will not affect the function of the unit.
If you have a window unit, debris can be pulled into the fan, so they should be turned off during a storm when a lot of debris is flying around. In the case of hail – unless severe, you risk doing more damage to the window unit by trying to remove it quickly (and dropping it) than from hail strikes.
Lightening – Yikes!
The other storm situation to be aware of is electricity strikes. Power surges can cause anything from blown fuses to burnt capacitors and wires. Not fixing these problems can cause damage to your compressor with continued use, but the price tag to have these components fixed is not a major repair (and can possibly be covered by your home insurance). If you have other devices that have been affected by a power surge, it’s best to have your air conditioning unit checked for damage before the problem is compounded by damage to your compressor.
To prevent electrical damage during a storm, turn your air conditioner off at the thermostat. It is only susceptible to power surges when the unit is running. That doesn’t protect you from a direct lightening strike of course – but the chances of that happening are extremely rare!
So the good news – while the storm that hit DFW last week obviously did some extensive damage to some areas, it was an issue of hail so extreme it did damage to the entire property. The AC unit was not singled out. In most cases your air conditioning is not in danger of extreme damage from a storm. And unless there is a lot of lightening activity, you don’t have to sit in a hot house to wait out the storm. If you do notice a problem with your unit cooling after a storm, don’t be afraid to call a professional for fear that it’s something major that will need to be replaced. Most likely it will be a small, affordable fix.

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