Florence Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

You know, living here in the shadow of the Wet Mountains gives us some of the prettiest views in the state, but it also puts a bullseye right on our roofs when the spring and summer storms roll in. What happens is, those warm, moist air masses coming up from the south smack right into the cooler air that gets funneled down through the Arkansas River Valley. That collision doesn’t just fizzle out—it stacks up into these towering, angry thunderheads that seem to park right over Fremont County. And because we’re nestled right at the base of the foothills, the geography acts like a giant funnel, squeezing the wind and forcing those hail stones to get tossed around in the updrafts longer before they finally drop. By the time they hit your shingles, they’re not little pebbles; they’re more like golf balls or even baseballs, coming down sideways with enough force to bruise the matting and knock the granules clean off.

It’s not just one big storm a year either, which is what folks from other parts of the country might expect. Our severe weather season really gets cranking in late May and runs straight through August, and we’ll get hit with multiple rounds of these microbursts and hail cells. The wind is the sneaky culprit, too—those downdrafts can hit sixty or seventy miles an hour in a heartbeat, and they’ll catch the edge of a compromised shingle and just peel it back like the lid on a tin can. I’ve been up on roofs all over this valley, and I can tell you the damage isn’t always obvious from the ground. You might just see a few missing tabs, but underneath, the hail has turned your asphalt into something that looks like a moonscape, cracked and brittle. That’s why I always tell my neighbors here in Florence—if you hear that first big crack of thunder, don’t wait until the next storm to give me a call. The second one will always find the weak spot the first one created.