Ault Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing up here for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I tell every homeowner in Ault, it’s that you’re sitting right in the bullseye. We’re not tucked into the foothills like Fort Collins or shielded by the hogbacks; we’re out on the open prairie, which means those spring and early summer storms rolling off the Rockies have a clear, flat runway to build up speed and fury. The hail that hits us isn’t those little pea-sized pebbles you see in town—it’s often golf-ball or even baseball-sized, driven by straight-line winds that come screaming down the Front Range. That combination is brutal on asphalt shingles because the wind lifts the edges, and then the hail slams into the exposed underlayer, bruising the mat and knocking the granules right off. It’s not a matter of *if* you’ll get hit, but *when*, and I’ve seen roofs that looked fine from the street absolutely shredded up close.

And it’s not just the big, dramatic storms you have to worry about. Our severe weather window runs from late April through August, but we get those sneaky, violent microbursts in the middle of summer, too—the kind that come out of nowhere on a hot afternoon and drop an inch of hail in fifteen minutes. The geography works against us here because we’re at that elevation where the jet stream dips and the warm, moist air from the south collides with the cool mountain air, creating that unstable, churning atmosphere. Plus, with all the open fields around, there’s nothing to break the wind’s force, so it hits your roof at full velocity from every angle. I’ve replaced more roofs in Ault than anywhere else in Weld County, and it’s almost always the same story—a storm that lasted twenty minutes did more damage than a decade of sun and snow. That’s why I always tell folks to get a free inspection after any big blow, because by the time you see a leak, the structural damage is already done.