Sims Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in this part of Wilson County for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Sims, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye for some of the nastiest spring and summer weather in the state. You’ve got that unique bowl effect from the low, flat farmland and the way the coastal plain meets the Sandhills just to the west. When those big, slow-moving supercells roll in from the southwest—usually late March through June—they don’t have any mountains or tall tree lines to break them up. They just sit over us and spin, and that’s when you get those marble-to-golf-ball sized hailstones coming down sideways with 60-mile-an-hour gusts. I’ve seen storms drop an inch of ice in ten minutes right here on Old Wilson Road, and that’s not just a few dings—that’s your shingles getting bruised and granule loss that you won’t even notice until the next big rain.

And it’s not just the springtime. We get those pop-up thunderstorms in August and September that come out of nowhere, usually after a week of 95-degree heat. The ground heats up so fast that the air just explodes upward, and those storms can produce straight-line winds that are worse than a weak tornado. I’ve pulled up three-tab shingles that looked like they’d been peeled back with a can opener, and the funny thing is, the house next door might be fine. It’s all about how the wind hits your roofline—if you’ve got a steep pitch facing the southwest, you’re going to take the brunt. Plus, with all the pine trees and open fields around here, there’s nothing to slow that wind down before it slams into your ridge vent. So when you hear me say your roof is due for an inspection after every big storm, I’m not trying to sell you something—I’m just telling you what I see every single year on these country roads.