Streetman Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been roofing here for over twenty years, and I can tell you straight—Streetman sits right in that nasty corridor where the spring and fall storm systems like to line up and just unload. We’re basically on the eastern edge of the Hill Country, but we’re also close enough to the Gulf that when those warm, muggy air masses push up against a cold front, the sky turns that sickly green and the wind starts screaming out of the southwest. It’s not just a little thunderstorm; we get those supercell monsters that drop hail the size of golf balls, sometimes bigger, and they’ll come through in waves. The geography here is flat and open, so there’s nothing to break up that wind—it just rolls across the pastures and hits your roof square on, lifting shingles and driving rain right under the edges before you even have time to blink.

And it’s not a once-in-a-blue-moon thing, either. Our worst months are usually April through June, and then again in October and November, when those cold fronts start colliding with the last of the summer heat. I’ve seen roofs that looked fine in the morning and were completely shredded by dinner time—torn shingles, dented flashing, and sometimes the hail actually punches holes right through the underlayment. The problem is, folks here get used to the storms, so they don’t think about the damage until the next big one hits, and by then it’s too late. If you’ve got a composition shingle roof, that wind is going to lift those tabs and the hail is going to bruise the mat, and before you know it, you’re looking at leaks in the living room. Trust me, I’ve replaced more roofs in this little town than I can count, and it’s always the same story—the weather here doesn’t play nice, and your roof is the first thing it takes a swing at.