Morton Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing here for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Morton, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye for hail. We’re out here on the South Plains, flat as a pancake, and that open country acts like a highway for those spring storms that boil up out of the southwest. When a supercell gets going, it doesn’t have any hills or trees to break it up, so those hailstones just tumble across the ground at sixty, seventy miles an hour. And it’s not just the size—we get those big, jagged chunks that hit like rocks, not those little round pebbles. I’ve pulled shingles off houses out here that looked like someone took a shotgun to them, and the worst part is, it can happen in May, June, or even a surprise storm in October when you least expect it.

The wind is just as bad, and honestly, it’s the combo that really tears things up. Once that hail has punched little holes or knocked the granules off your shingles, the wind finishes the job. We get those straight-line winds and microbursts that come screaming down from the northwest, and they’ll peel back a compromised shingle like it’s nothing. Plus, the constant blowing we get year-round—that fine, sandy dirt from the fields—acts like sandpaper, wearing down the protective coating on your roof before the big storms even hit. So by the time a severe cell rolls through, your roof is already weakened, and that’s when you end up with leaks in the living room instead of just a few missing tabs. It’s not a matter of *if* you’ll get hit hard, it’s a matter of *when*, and I’ve seen too many folks in town learn that the hard way.