Fairplay Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs up here for over fifteen years, and if there’s one thing I tell every homeowner in Fairplay, it’s that we’re sitting in a bullseye. It’s not just the storms themselves, it’s the way the mountains funnel them. We’re at 10,000 feet, right in that zone where warm, moist air from the valleys gets shoved up against the Continental Divide, and that creates these violent, localized thunderheads that seem to explode right over town. Those clouds don’t just drop rain; they drop hail that can be the size of golf balls, and because we’re so high, the stones have less atmosphere to melt through before they hit your shingles. I’ve seen hail here that’s almost pure ice, rock-hard and sharp, and when it comes down sideways with a 60-mile-an-hour wind behind it, it’s like getting sandblasted with frozen rocks.

And the timing is the real kicker. Our severe weather season isn’t just a spring thing; it stretches from late May all the way through August, and we get those pop-up supercells almost every single afternoon. The wind is the sneaky part—it’s not just the straight-line gusts that rip shingles off, it’s the way it gets under the edges of your flashing and lifts them up, letting the next hailstorm drive water right into the decking. Plus, with the freeze-thaw cycles we get even in July, that granule loss from hail exposure makes your asphalt brittle, so a little wind damage today becomes a big leak next winter. Honestly, if you’ve got a roof that’s older than ten years up here, you’re not wondering *if* it’s going to get hammered, you’re just wondering *when*—and I’d rather you call me before the insurance adjuster does.