Manitou Springs Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

You know, living here in Manitou is a double-edged sword when it comes to our roofs. We’re nestled right up against the eastern slope of Pikes Peak, and that geography is exactly what puts us in the bullseye for hail. Those warm, moist afternoons in late spring and early summer—especially May through July—push up against the mountain face, and the air gets forced straight up into the sky. That vertical lift creates these towering, angry thunderheads that just sit right over our valley and drop marble-to-baseball-sized hail with almost no warning. It’s not like the Front Range where a storm might blow through in twenty minutes; up here, the mountains act like a wall, holding the storm cells in place and letting them pound the same neighborhood for an hour straight. I’ve seen roofs that look like they’ve been hit with a shotgun, and it’s almost always the south and west-facing slopes that take the brunt because that’s the direction the storms roll in from.

And it’s not just the hail—the wind that comes with these cells is a whole other animal. When that cold downdraft hits the mountain and gets squeezed through the canyons, it turns into these violent, gusty channels that can easily hit 60 or 70 miles per hour. That wind will get under the edge of a shingle that’s already been bruised by hail, lift it up, and then the next gust rips it clean off. Plus, we get those wild chinook winds in the winter, too, which are dry and warm but can blow for days without stopping. So between the summer hailstorms that bruise and crack the asphalt, and the winter winds that peel and tear, your roof is basically taking a beating from both sides year-round. It’s not a matter of *if* you’ll need work done—it’s just a matter of how much damage you’ll find when you finally get up there to look.