Redwater Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in this part of Northeast Texas for over twenty years, and I can tell you straight up—Redwater sits right in the bullseye for some of the nastiest weather in the state. We’re tucked into that corridor where warm, moist air from the Gulf slams into cooler dry air rolling down from the Panhandle, and that collision is like throwing gasoline on a campfire. It’s not a matter of *if* we get hit, but *when*. Our severe season really ramps up in March and April, but honestly, we’ve seen baseball-sized hail as late as June and then again in October when those cold fronts start pushing through. The storms don’t just pass over—they seem to stall right on top of us, spinning and dropping hail for twenty minutes at a time, and that’s what chews up shingles like a hungry dog on a bone.

What makes it even worse is the lay of the land around here. We’ve got all these open fields and scattered tree lines, so there’s nothing to break up the wind before it hits your roofline. A straight-line wind gust of 70 or 80 mph is common in a good thunderstorm, and when that gets under a shingle that’s already been dinged by hail, it’s like peeling a banana. Plus, the soil here is heavy clay, and after a few days of rain, the ground gets soft—that means the posts holding up your roof deck can shift just a hair, which creates little waves in the sheathing. Then the next storm comes along, and the wind finds those weak spots. I’ve seen brand new roofs in Redwater get torn apart in one bad May night, not because the work was bad, but because the weather here is just plain mean. You gotta build for it, or you’re gonna be calling me every couple of years.