Greenwood Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs up here for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Greenwood, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye for hail. It’s not just bad luck—it’s the lay of the land. We’re nestled right where the rolling hills start to flatten out toward the Red River, and that little dip in the terrain acts like a funnel for spring storms. When those supercells come roaring up from the southwest, they hit that warmer air pocket over the valley and explode right on top of us. I’ve seen hailstones the size of golf balls, and a few years back, we had baseballs that punched straight through architectural shingles like they were paper. The wind that comes with those cells is just as nasty, often gusting over 70 miles an hour, which is more than enough to peel back a ridge cap or send a loose shingle sailing into the neighbor’s yard.

And it’s not just a one-and-done thing in the spring. We get a second wave of trouble in late October and November, when those cold fronts slam into the lingering Gulf moisture. That’s when the straight-line winds really get mean—they’ll come through and twist a tree clean out of the ground, and if your roof has any age on it, those gusts will catch the leading edge and lift it like an airplane wing. The real kicker is the temperature swings we get here. That constant baking in the Texas sun, followed by sudden, violent cool-downs, makes the shingles brittle. So by the time a storm does hit, the granules are already loose, and the asphalt is cracked. It doesn’t take a direct hit to cause damage—sometimes a strong gust is all it takes to finish what the sun started. That’s why I tell folks around here, if you hear thunder, you better start looking up at your ceiling, because the odds are stacked against us.