Stedman Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in this part of Cumberland County for over twenty years, and I can tell you Stedman gets hit harder than folks realize. We sit right in that corridor where the warm, moist air coming up from the Cape Fear River basin collides with the cooler air pushing down from the Sandhills. That mix is a recipe for those sudden, violent spring and summer thunderstorms that seem to pop up out of nowhere around 4 p.m. And it’s not just the rain—those storms roll through with straight-line winds that can easily hit 60 or 70 miles an hour, and they’ll grab a shingle and peel it back like a sardine can lid. Then, when the wind gets under that lifted edge, it’s all over for that roof.

But the real kicker is the hail. We’re not talking about those little pea-sized pellets that just bounce off. Every few years, we get a supercell that tracks right over the 301 corridor, and it’ll drop hail the size of golf balls or even baseballs. I’ve pulled shingles off houses off Maxwell Road that looked like someone took a hammer to them—bruised, cracked, and with the granules completely knocked off. And because our homes here are mostly shaded by those big pines and oaks, the hail hits the roof at an angle, which does even more damage than a straight drop. The worst part is, you might not see the damage from the ground, but that hail has compromised the asphalt’s protective layer. Then, when the next big storm blows through in the fall, the wind finds those weak spots and just tears the whole thing apart. It’s a one-two punch that’s unique to our little pocket of the state.