Everetts Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in this part of Eastern North Carolina for over twenty years, and I can tell you straight up—Everetts sits right in a bullseye. We’re tucked in that flat, open farmland between the Roanoke River and the coastal plain, which means there’s absolutely nothing to break up the wind for miles. When a strong thunderstorm rolls off the Piedmont in the late spring or early summer, it picks up speed across those fields like a freight train. That’s when you get those straight-line wind bursts that can hit sixty or seventy miles an hour without a tornado warning. And because we’re far enough inland, folks don’t always board up or take it as seriously as they would on the coast, but those gusts will grab a loose shingle and peel it right back like a sardine can.

Then you’ve got our hail season, which is sneaky. Most people think hail is a Texas or Oklahoma thing, but we get our fair share from those pop-up supercells that form along the warm, humid air coming up from the Gulf in August and September. The hail here isn’t always huge—maybe pea to golf ball size—but it comes down at an angle with that wind, hammering the same spot on your roof over and over. The real kicker is the temperature swings we get in the fall, too. One day it’s eighty degrees, the next it’s a cold front with freezing rain. That constant expansion and contraction weakens your shingles, so when that first big hail storm hits in October, they’re already brittle and ready to crack. I’ve seen roofs that looked fine from the street, but up close they looked like someone took a ball-peen hammer to them. It’s not a matter of if, but when, for most homes in this area.