Haxtun Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

You know, living out here on the high plains, we’re basically sitting in Mother Nature’s shooting gallery. Haxtun sits right in that corridor where warm, moist air from the Gulf slams into the cool, dry air coming off the Rockies, and that collision is what brews up our monster storms. We don’t get the gentle, all-day rains they see further east—ours are these violent, short-lived supercells that pop up out of nowhere, usually starting in late April and running right through June. And because there’s nothing but flat, open farmland for miles in every direction, there’s zero terrain to break up the wind or deflect those updrafts. That means the hail gets tossed around in the clouds like a rock tumbler for a long time before it falls, so by the time it hits your roof, those stones are big, dense, and falling straight down with the full force of a 60-mile-an-hour downdraft behind them.

The wind is just as nasty a partner in crime. When those storms roll through, we routinely see straight-line winds that gust past 70 or 80 miles an hour, and they don’t come from one direction—they swirl and shift as the storm breathes. That’s the real killer for your shingles. A single strong gust might just lift a corner, but when the wind changes direction and gets under that lifted edge, it peels shingles back like a sardine can. And once the wind has done that, the next hailstorm—which could be just a week later—finishes the job by driving water straight into the exposed underlayment. I’ve been up on roofs all over Phillips County, and I can tell you, the homes that get hit worst are the ones that took a beating in May and then got hit again in July. It’s not a matter of *if* your roof will take a hit here; it’s a matter of how many hits it can take before you call me.