Roofing in New York is a tale of two roofs, and only one of them is yours. City roofs are often flat membranes behind parapets, with scuppers, internal drains, bulkheads, and copings. Upstate roofs are usually pitched, shingled, and asked to hold snow. Upstate weather is not the city. Ponding on a harbor roof and an ice dam over a lake-plain eave are different leaks, even when the ceiling stain looks the same.
Name the shape before you name the symptom. A flat roof fails at the drain, the seam, the flashing where a wall comes through, or the coping that has opened. A pitched roof fails at the eave, the valley, the chimney, a pipe boot, or a slope that lost its granules and its ability to shed. Buffalo snow is a load, then a thaw, then a load again. City slush usually leaves. Say which winter you are in.
Look from a safe place and describe what you can already see. A stain on the top floor, a blistered membrane, a missing shingle, a gutter full of ice, granules in the downspout, daylight in the attic. Do not walk a steep frozen slope or a soft flat roof to get a better story. Say whether the leak appears only while snow is melting or whenever it rains. That timing tells the job apart.
Say leak, wear, or storm. Say flat or pitched. Say whether anyone has coated or patched this roof before, and whether those patches are what failed. Ask about the deck under the covering, the flashing at walls, and how water is supposed to leave. A repair that does not name the exit path will be a second stain next season. If the heat in the attic is melting snow from underneath, say that too.
Bring the building, the roof shape, and the weather that hit it. Do not borrow a scope from a different part of the state. The city needs drains and parapets. Upstate needs eaves, ice, and snow load. Buffalo needs the lake in the description. Roofing follows that, or it fails twice. Call the number on this page.