Cordova Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in this part of the Sandhills for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Cordova, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye for some of the nastiest weather in the state. You see, we’re nestled right where the flat coastal plain starts to roll up into the Piedmont, and that little bump in the terrain acts like a ramp for spring thunderstorms. When those big, boiling clouds come roaring in from the southwest, usually between March and June, they hit that higher ground and just explode. That’s when you get the straight-line winds—we’re talking 60, 70, sometimes 80 miles an hour—that peel shingles right off like they’re nothing. And the hail? It’s not those little pea-sized pebbles you see up north. No, sir. We get those golf-ball and even baseball-sized chunks that come down at an angle, driven by that wind, and they just pulverize the granules off your asphalt. It’s not a matter of if, but when, your roof is going to take a beating.

And it’s not just the springtime storms, either. We get the tail-end of hurricane season, usually from August through October, and even if the eye is a hundred miles inland, the outer bands spin off these crazy, tornadic cells that seem to find our little community. The geography here is a big part of it, too. We’ve got all these mature pines and oaks lining the streets, and while they’re beautiful, they act like a wind tunnel, funneling the gusts right down into your roofline. Plus, all that tree debris—the limbs and pine cones—gets picked up by the wind and acts like shrapnel, cracking your tiles or punching holes in your underlayment. I’ve seen brand new roofs in Cordova that look like they’ve been through a war after one bad August thunderstorm. It’s just the nature of the beast here, and honestly, it’s why I tell folks to get a good look at their roof before the first big storm of the season, because once that wind starts howling, it’s already too late.