Poteet Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in Atascosa County for over twenty years, and I can tell you Poteet gets hit harder than folks realize. We sit right in that corridor where Gulf moisture rolls up and collides with the dry air coming off the Hill Country, and that’s a recipe for supercell thunderstorms. Those storms don’t just bring a little rain—they spin up with straight-line winds that can hit 70 or 80 miles an hour, and the hail that comes with them is often the size of golf balls or bigger. The problem is our geography: we’re flat, open ranch land, so there’s nothing to break up the wind’s momentum. A storm can barrel across the county from the southwest, and by the time it hits your neighborhood, it’s still got all its punch. I’ve seen shingles that looked fine from the street, but up close they were bruised and granule-less, just waiting to leak.

And the timing is what really catches people off guard. Our severe season isn’t just one month—it’s a long stretch from March through June, with a second nasty wave in October and November. Spring is the worst because the warm, humid afternoons build those towering clouds fast, and they’ll drop hail for ten minutes that does more damage than a hurricane. The wind is the sneaky part, too. It’ll lift the edges of your shingles, and then the next rainstorm gets underneath and peels them back like a sardine can. I’ve had homeowners tell me, “But the hail wasn’t that big,” and I have to explain that it’s not always the size—it’s the angle and the wind speed driving it sideways into your roof deck. If you’ve got a composition shingle roof that’s more than ten years old, it’s already brittle from our summer heat, and one good storm in April can turn it into a total loss. That’s just the reality of living here, and it’s why I always tell folks to get their roofs inspected before the first big storm rolls in, not after.