Francitas Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing this stretch of the Gulf Coast for over twenty years, and I can tell you Francitas gets hit from two directions that most folks don’t think about. You’ve got the classic spring and early summer severe weather—those big, slow-moving supercells that roll up from the southwest out of the Hill Country. They’ll sit right over the flat, open ranch land between here and the coast and just spin, dropping hail the size of golf balls for twenty minutes straight. There’s nothing to break the wind up either; no hills, no tree lines thick enough to matter, just wide-open prairie. So when a storm finally moves through, that wind comes off the ground flat and hard, lifting shingles from the edges before the hail even has a chance to bruise the matting underneath.

Then, of course, you’ve got hurricane season from June through November. We’re far enough inland that we don’t get the full storm surge, but we’re right in that nasty northeast quadrant where the winds are strongest and the rain bands just keep wrapping around. I’ve seen storms that weren’t even named yet drop straight-line winds here that snapped power poles like twigs, and the hail that comes with those outer bands is often worse than what the coast sees because it’s been bouncing around in the clouds longer. The real kicker is the humidity—after a few years of that salt air and constant moisture, your shingles get brittle, and when a 60-mile-an-hour gust catches a loose tab, it’s gone. You’re not just fighting the storm; you’re fighting the fact that this ground stays wet and hot for half the year, which ages a roof faster than anywhere else I’ve worked.