Brunswick Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in Glynn County for over twenty years, and I can tell you firsthand that Brunswick sits in a perfect storm alley. We’re tucked right between the Atlantic and the vast marshlands, and that geography acts like a funnel for summer thunderstorms. When those afternoon pop-up cells roll in off the water, they don’t just sprinkle—they slam us with straight-line winds that can hit sixty or seventy miles an hour, and those gusts will catch the underside of your shingles and peel them back like a sardine can. Add in the fact that our humidity and salt air constantly weaken the adhesive strips on your roof, and by the time a real storm hits, your shingles are already half-loose. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

And then you’ve got hail, which folks down here don’t expect because we’re not in tornado alley. But our severe weather season, which really ramps up from March through June and again in early fall, brings these massive, slow-moving supercells that can drop golf-ball-sized hail right on top of us. The tricky part is that our coastal breeze often keeps the hail small enough to not dent your car, but it’s still big enough to bruise the asphalt granules off your roof. Once those granules are gone, your shingles are basically sunbaked and brittle, and the next windy day will finish the job. I’ve seen brand-new roofs on St. Simons and in the historic district look like they’d been through a war after just one of these squall lines, and it’s all because we’re sitting right in the crosshairs of that warm Gulf water and the cooler Atlantic air. You really have to think of your roof as a sail here, not a shield.