Early Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in this county for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Early, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye for some of the nastiest spring weather in Texas. You see, we’re perched right on the edge of the Hill Country, where the warm, moist air from the Gulf slams head-on into those dry, cooler winds coming down off the plains. That collision doesn’t just brew a little afternoon shower—it stacks up supercell thunderstorms that can drop golf-ball-sized hail without a minute’s warning. And because our town is so spread out with all these open fields and ranchland, there’s nothing to break up that wind. It comes howling across the flat ground, straight at your roofline, and it doesn’t lose an ounce of speed until it hits your shingles.

What really gets me is the timing. We’re not talking about a rare, once-in-a-decade event—our severe weather season runs hard from late March all the way through June, and then we get a second nasty round in the fall when those cold fronts start pushing back down. I’ve seen storms roll through here that sound like a freight train, and the next morning I’m out there looking at roofs that look like someone took a shotgun to them. The hail doesn’t just bruise the shingles; it knocks the granules clean off, and then that 60 or 70 mile-per-hour wind we get with these cells peels those weakened tabs right up. It’s a one-two punch that’s unique to this little pocket of Brown County, and honestly, if you haven’t had your roof inspected after a big blow, you’re gambling with the one thing standing between your living room and a whole lot of water.