Reklaw Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing here for over twenty years, and I can tell you Reklaw gets hammered in a way folks from bigger cities just don’t expect. We sit right in that corridor where the warm, moist air from the Gulf collides with the cooler fronts sweeping down from the north, and that’s a recipe for some nasty, spinning supercells. Those storms don’t just pass through—they stall and stack up right over the piney woods, dropping hail that can range from pea-sized to baseball-sized in a matter of minutes. And because we’re surrounded by open pasture and scattered trees, there’s nothing to break up the wind. It comes howling across those flat fields, hitting your roof at full force, and once the shingles are scuffed up by the hail, that wind will peel them back like a sardine can.

The real kicker is the timing. Our worst months are typically March through May, and then again in late October, when the seasons are changing and the jet stream dips right over East Texas. I’ve seen storms roll in at 4 p.m. on a sunny Tuesday and by 4:30, there’s golf-ball ice piled up in the gutters and shingles scattered across the yard. The hail here isn’t just a nuisance—it’s dense and often driven sideways by gusts that can hit 70 or 80 miles an hour. That combination means the impact craters the asphalt, and the wind lifts the edges, letting rain work its way under and rot the decking before you even notice a leak. It’s not a matter of *if* your roof takes a beating living here; it’s a matter of *when*, and I’ve replaced more roofs in this little town than I can count for exactly that reason.