Higgins Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing up here in the Texas Panhandle for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Higgins, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye for some of the nastiest weather in the country. You’ve got the open, flat prairie stretching for miles in every direction, and that means there’s absolutely nothing to break up the wind before it slams into your roofline. When a spring storm system rolls in from the Rockies, it picks up speed across all that open land, and by the time it hits us, we’re getting straight-line gusts that can peel shingles right off the deck. It’s not like in the city where trees and buildings give you a little shelter—out here, your roof is the first and only thing standing between your living room and a 70-mile-an-hour gust.

And then there’s the hail, which is really the sneaky one. We get our worst hail in late April through June, when those supercell thunderstorms start popping up in the afternoon. The geography plays a huge part here—we’re right at the edge of what meteorologists call “Hail Alley,” and the dry air from the west collides with moist air from the Gulf right over our heads. That mix creates those massive updrafts that keep hailstones bouncing around in the clouds until they’re the size of golf balls or bigger. I’ve pulled shingles off homes in Higgins that looked fine from the street, but up close they were riddled with impact fractures—the fiberglass mat was broken even though the granules were still on top. That’s the kind of damage that doesn’t show up in a quick look, but it’s already compromising your roof’s ability to shed water. So when you hear thunder rumbling in the distance, just remember: your roof is taking a beating every single time, and it’s only a matter of time before one of those storms is the one that does it in.