Bushland Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing these Panhandle plains for over twenty years, and I can tell you Bushland gets hit harder than folks realize. We sit right in that open stretch between Amarillo and the New Mexico line, which means there’s absolutely nothing to break up the wind. When a spring storm rolls in off the Rockies, it comes barreling across flat, open ranchland and picks up speed like a freight train with no brakes. That’s why we’ll see straight-line winds of 70 or 80 miles an hour that just peel shingles right off a roof, and the hail isn’t the little pea-sized stuff you see in Dallas—we’re talking golf ball to baseball size, driven sideways at 60 miles an hour. It’s not a matter of if your roof takes a beating, it’s a matter of when.

The worst of it hits from late April through June, when those dry lines clash with moist Gulf air, and then again in September when the first cold fronts start pushing down. I’ve pulled off roofs out here where the hail actually fractured the plywood decking underneath, not just dings in the shingles. And because we’re at a higher elevation, the sun bakes those asphalt shingles brittle all summer long, so by the time the first big storm hits in the fall, they’re already half-cracked and ready to shatter on impact. You add that to the fact that most homes here have steep pitches to shed snow, which makes them even more vulnerable to uplift—the wind gets under that edge and just rips it up like a deck of cards. I tell my customers all the time, if you live in Bushland, you’re not just hoping for a mild season; you’re planning for the one that’s coming.