When a hurricane comes, high winds blow from all directions and can wreak havoc on your solar panels. Wind passes through the small space that normally exists between the panels and the roof or the ground causing panels to lift up or come loose. Such uplifting forces might tear panels from their mounts, or even the mounts from the roof or ground. However, this is rarely the case: professional installers take all that into consideration and mount solar panels according to wind patterns. As for PV modules themselves, most of them are certified to withstand winds of up to about 140 mph.
Another source of panel damage caused by high winds can be flying debris. The materials blown around may be of different sizes and types, but solar panels are able to go through it all. On May 8, 2017, the Denver area saw an unusually severe hailstorm, which left golf ball-sized dents on the roofs of homes and cars. A large rooftop solar array of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), however, survived with only
one broken panel out of 3,000.