Stem Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs up here in Granville County for over twenty years, and I can tell you Stem has a bullseye on its back when the spring and summer storms roll in. We sit right in that corridor where the cold air dropping down from the Virginia mountains collides with the hot, humid air pushing up from the coast. That clash doesn’t just give us pretty sunsets—it stacks the atmosphere like a layer cake, and when those supercell thunderstorms get going, they’ll drop hail the size of golf balls without a second thought. The geography doesn’t help, either. We’re surrounded by all these rolling hills and patches of dense hardwood forest, which breaks up the wind’s path and creates that chaotic, swirling turbulence right at rooftop level. A straight-line gust might blow over a tree, but here, it’s the twisting, erratic microbursts that rip shingles clean off or pound them until the granules are scattered across your yard like sand.

And it’s not just the big, dramatic storms you have to worry about. Our severe weather season stretches from March all the way through early July, and then we get a second round in the fall when the remnants of Gulf hurricanes come marching up I-85. Those systems are sneaky—they’ll bring hours of steady, wind-driven rain that gets under any loose tab, and then a sudden squall line will hit with 60-mile-an-hour gusts that act like a giant vacuum, peeling back the edges of your roof deck. The real kicker is the temperature swings we get in late winter. One week it’s 70 degrees, the next it’s 20, and that constant expansion and contraction makes your shingles brittle. So when that first hailstorm of April finally hits, it’s not a question of *if* you’ll have damage, but how much you’ll be able to spot before the next big blow comes through.