Howard Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs up here for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I tell every homeowner in Howard, it’s that you’re not being paranoid—your roof is genuinely in the crosshairs. We sit right in that high mountain valley where the weather gets squeezed between the Sangre de Cristo range and the Wet Mountains. What happens is, those warm, moist afternoon winds come rolling up from the southwest, hit the peaks, and get forced straight up into the cold air. That’s the perfect recipe for those sudden, violent thunderstorms that seem to appear out of nowhere around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, especially from late May through August. And because the valley funnels that wind like a chimney, the hail gets bounced around and hammered down with a force you just don’t see down in Pueblo or even Canon City.

It’s not just the size of the hail, either—it’s the constant, relentless nature of it. We get these narrow, intense bands of storms that stall right over the valley, so you might get fifteen minutes of golf-ball-sized hail, then a lull, then another wave. That repeated impact, combined with the straight-line winds that can gust to sixty or seventy miles an hour, really tears up the asphalt granules and lifts the shingle edges. Once those edges are lifted, the next windstorm gets underneath and peels them back like a sardine can. And because we’re at altitude, the sun is brutal, baking the shingles brittle, so when that first big hailstorm hits in June, the impact doesn’t just dent them—it cracks them clean through. I’ve seen roofs that look fine from the street but are completely compromised underneath, and by the time the fall snows come, you’re already leaking. That’s just the reality of living in this beautiful, wild spot.