Pearsall Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs out here for over twenty years, and I can tell you Pearsall gets hit harder than folks realize. We sit right in that corridor where Gulf moisture slams into the Hill Country’s edge, and that’s a recipe for trouble. When those spring storms roll in off the southwest—usually March through May, but we’ve seen rogue cells in October too—they don’t just bring rain. The way the terrain flattens out just past the Frio River, the wind gets a clear runway to build up speed, and those supercells can drop hail the size of golf balls or bigger without any warning. I’ve pulled shingles off houses that looked fine from the street, but underneath, the hail had bruised the mat so bad the granules were just sliding off like sand.

And it’s not just the big storms. We get those quick, violent pop-up thunderstorms in the summer heat that seem to come out of nowhere, and they’ll pack straight-line winds of 60 to 70 miles an hour. The problem is our homes are mostly single-story with wide, low-pitched roofs—great for keeping cool, but terrible for shedding wind. That wind gets under the edges, lifts the shingles, and then the next hailstorm finishes the job. Plus, the clay soil here expands and contracts like crazy with the dry spells and flash floods, which shifts the foundation just enough to crack the roof decking. So by the time you see a leak, the damage has been brewing for months. That’s why I always tell folks—don’t wait for the insurance adjuster to find it. After any storm with quarter-sized hail or gusts over 50, give me a call and I’ll walk your roof with you. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.