Cotulla Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing here for over twenty years, and I can tell you straight—Cotulla sits right in the bullseye of some of the nastiest weather Texas can throw at us. We’re smack in the middle of that corridor where warm, moist air from the Gulf slams into dry, hot air coming off the desert, and that collision is a recipe for supercell thunderstorms. Those storms don’t just give us a little sprinkle; they roll in fast, usually in the spring and again in the fall, and they bring hail the size of golf balls or bigger. I’ve pulled shingles off roofs that looked like someone took a shotgun to them, and it’s not just the impact—it’s the sheer force of those stones hitting at an angle, prying up the edges and breaking the seal on every single tab.

And then there’s the wind, which is honestly the sneaky killer. Because we’re so flat and open out here, with nothing but mesquite and scrub brush to break the breeze, a storm’s straight-line winds can whip across the ground at seventy or eighty miles an hour without even slowing down. Those gusts get under a loose shingle and just peel it back like a sardine can lid, and once one goes, the next one follows, and before you know it you’ve got a bare patch that’s letting water pour into your attic. The heat doesn’t help either—our summers bake those shingles brittle, so by the time the first big storm hits in April, they’re already stiff and cracked, just waiting to shatter. It’s not a matter of *if* you’ll get hit, it’s a matter of *when*, and I’ve seen too many folks in this town learn that the hard way.