Cory Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs up here for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Cory, it’s that we’re sitting right in Mother Nature’s crosshairs. You see how we’re tucked up against the Uncompahgre Plateau? That’s the problem. Those big, warm, moist air masses come rolling up from the southwest, and when they slam into that wall of rock, they get forced straight up into the colder air. That’s a recipe for supercell thunderstorms, and those are the ones that spit out hailstones the size of golf balls—sometimes bigger. We don’t get the gentle, sideways rain like they do on the Front Range; ours comes straight down with a vengeance, and the wind that precedes it is what really tears the shingles loose before the ice even hits.

And it’s not just a summer fluke, either. Our severe weather season starts early, usually in late April, and it’ll keep hammering us right through July. But the sneaky one is the fall. Everyone thinks they’re safe after Labor Day, but that’s when the cold fronts start clashing with the last of the warm air, and we get those violent, short-lived microbursts that can peel a whole roof deck off in thirty seconds. The hail here isn’t just round, either—it’s often jagged and wind-driven, so it doesn’t just bounce off; it digs into the asphalt and granule loss is brutal. I’ve seen brand new architectural shingles look ten years old after one good June storm. So if you’re in Cory, you’re not asking *if* you’ll need a roof, you’re just asking *when*.