Cayuga Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing here for over twenty years, and I can tell you straight up—Cayuga sits right in the bullseye of some of the nastiest spring weather in Texas. We’re tucked into that corridor where the dry line from the west slams into the humid Gulf air, and that’s a recipe for supercell thunderstorms that just park over us. You’ll see it most years between March and June, but honestly, we’ve had hail in October that looked like golf balls. The geography doesn’t help either—all that open farmland and the rolling hills to the south mean there’s nothing to break up the wind. A storm can roll in from the southwest at 60 miles an hour, and by the time it hits your roof, it’s got a full head of steam with zero natural windbreaks.

And here’s the thing about hail specifically—it’s not just the size that gets you, it’s the angle. When we get those classic Texas supercells, the updrafts are so strong that hail gets tossed around and comes down sideways, hammering your shingles at an angle instead of straight down. That’s what tears up the edges and the ridge caps, and it’s why you’ll see houses on one side of the street with shredded roofs while the other side looks fine. Plus, the wind that comes with these storms—we’re talking 70 to 80 mile per hour gusts on the regular—can lift those shingles right off the deck if they’re even a little bit worn. I’ve seen brand new roofs in Cayuga get destroyed in a single twenty-minute storm because the hail hit first, weakened the seal, and then the wind did the rest. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.