Art Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs out here for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I tell every homeowner in Art, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye of Texas’s worst spring weather. You see, our little town sits right on the edge of the Hill Country, where the warm, moist air coming up from the Gulf slams head-on into those dry, cool fronts rolling down from the Panhandle. That collision doesn’t just make for a pretty sunset—it stacks up supercell thunderstorms like pancakes, and those are the exact storms that spit out baseball-sized hail. We don’t get the gentle, pea-sized stuff you see in other places; our hail comes down with enough force to bruise the shingles and knock the granules right off, and once that protective layer is gone, the sun does the rest of the damage before you even notice.

And it’s not just the hail—the wind that comes with these systems is a whole other animal. Because we’re so flat and open out here, with nothing but mesquite and scrub brush to break the gusts, those straight-line winds can hit sixty or seventy miles an hour without even trying. I’ve seen storms roll through in late April and early May where the wind literally peels shingles back like a sardine can, and then the next rainstorm gets underneath and lifts the whole deck. The kicker is, we’ll get two or three of these monster events in a single season, so even if you patch one spot, the next storm finds the weak point. It’s not a matter of *if* your roof takes a beating out here—it’s a matter of how many times you’re willing to climb up there with a tarp before you finally call me.