HVAC in Omaha after hail often means the condenser in the side yard. Ice folds the fins, the unit still runs, and the upstairs will not cool once the river humidity settles in. Dimples and flattened fins are airflow problems you can see. A coil that cannot move air will freeze, short-cycle, and get misdiagnosed as a refrigerant mystery. Start with the outdoor unit the storm actually hit.
Older midtown houses add a second trick. Ducts were sized for the original rooms, then a porch became a bedroom and a finished attic became a study. The new condenser cannot invent returns that were never cut. Ask what was checked: filter, coil, ducts, and whether the indoor and outdoor equipment are a matched pair or a new box on an old coil. A collapsed flex run in a crawl or a buried return behind furniture can imitate a dead compressor on a July afternoon.
Basement furnaces still carry these houses through cold months, and a hail week is a good time to look at the flue and the intake pipes while you are already outside. High-efficiency units that exhaust at the side wall can ice, and a condensate line that drains poorly will shut the heat down on the first bitter night. If you smell combustion problems or the unit is short-cycling, stop and have it looked at.
Replacement belongs in a calm week, not in the middle of a heat spell if you can help it, but a dead system does not offer that luxury. Ask whether the load was calculated for this brick house or this open west-side ranch, not copied off the old label. Efficiency stickers are a test comparison. They do not promise a result on your bill. Shade, a finished basement, and a west wall of glass change the load in ways a sticker never sees.
Say cooling or heat, weak or dead, and whether hail struck the outdoor unit. Name the neighborhood and the age of the equipment if you know it. If bedrooms over the garage or under the attic never keep up, say that too. Omaha humidity will expose a mashed condenser faster than a mild day will. Call the number on this page.