Raywood Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing in this part of Southeast Texas for over twenty years, and Raywood gets hit harder than folks realize. We’re sitting right in that corridor where Gulf moisture rolls in and collides with those dry northerly fronts, especially from March through June. That’s when the sky turns that sickly green and the storms start spinning. The geography here doesn’t do us any favors either—all that flat, open farmland between here and the coast means there’s nothing to break up the wind. A supercell can roll in from the Gulf at sixty miles an hour and just keep its strength all the way through Liberty County, and Raywood’s right in the bullseye more often than not.

And it’s not just the wind speed, it’s the hail that comes with it. We get those big, jagged stones—golf ball to baseball size—that come down at an angle because of the straight-line winds. They don’t just bounce off; they slam into the shingles sideways, lifting the tabs and bruising the mat underneath. You might not see the damage from the ground, but I’ve pulled off plenty of roofs out here that looked fine from the street and were completely compromised underneath. The heat and humidity we get in July and August then bake those weakened spots, and before you know it, a little rain in September turns into a ceiling stain in the living room. It’s a sneaky, slow kind of destruction, but it starts with those spring storms every single year.