Kendleton Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing in this part of Texas for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Kendleton, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye for some of the nastiest weather the Gulf Coast can throw at us. You’ve got the Brazos River winding right around us, and all that low, flat farmland just acts like a highway for supercell storms. When those big thunderheads roll in from the southwest, usually starting in March and peaking through June, they don’t have any hills or tree lines to break them up. They just barrel across the open prairie, and that’s when the hail starts. It’s not that polite little pea-sized stuff, either—we routinely see golf ball and even baseball-sized stones up here, and when they’re coming down sideways at 60 miles an hour, they hit your shingles like a thousand little hammers.

But the hail is only half the story. The real kicker is the wind that comes with those same storms, especially during our secondary season in the fall, from late September into November. Because we’re so close to the coast, we get these intense, squall-line thunderstorms that pack straight-line winds of 70 to 80 miles per hour, and sometimes worse. I’ve seen storms blow through here that just peel shingles right off a roof like they were nothing but stickers on a watermelon. The combination is what really gets you—the hail weakens and cracks the asphalt, and then the wind gets underneath those damaged edges and lifts them clean off. It’s a one-two punch that’s unique to this area, and honestly, if your roof is more than ten years old, you’re playing with fire every time the sky turns that ugly green color.