Carlton Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in this county for over twenty years, and I can tell you Carlton gets hit harder than folks realize. We sit right in that corridor where the warm, moist air from the Gulf collides with the cooler dry lines sweeping down from the Panhandle. That clash doesn’t just brew a passing shower—it stacks up supercell thunderstorms that roll through like freight trains, usually starting in late March and peaking right through May. The hail we get isn’t that pea-sized stuff you can shrug off; it’s often golf-ball or even baseball-sized, and because the storms move fast and drop stones at a steep angle, they hammer your shingles with a sideways punch that tears the granules right off. By the time July rolls around, the heat bakes those weakened spots, and that’s when you start seeing the real damage.

And it’s not just the hail—the wind is the sneaky killer. Our geography here, with all the open farmland and flat prairie to the west, gives the wind a clear, unobstructed runway to build up speed before it hits the neighborhoods. Those same thunderstorms that bring the hail will also throw straight-line gusts of sixty, seventy, even eighty miles an hour, and that’s enough to peel back the corners of composition shingles or lift them clean off the deck if they’re not nailed down right. The problem is, a lot of homes in Carlton were built in the late 90s and early 2000s with a single layer of standard shingles, and they just weren’t rated for that kind of repeated beating. So when a storm blows through in April and you only see a few loose granules in the gutter, don’t be fooled—the wind has already loosened the sealant, and the next big blow is going to finish the job. That’s why I always tell folks here, if you’ve had any hail over an inch in the last five years, it’s worth getting a free inspection before the next season starts, not after.