Westminster Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

Look, I’ve been replacing roofs in Collin County for over twenty years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about Westminster, it’s that we’re sitting right in the bullseye of what I call “hail alley.” You see, our geography here is flat, wide-open farmland all the way to the Red River, and that gives those spring thunderstorms a clear, unobstructed runway to build up speed and intensity. When a supercell rolls in from the southwest—usually between March and June—it doesn’t have any hills or tree lines to break it up. That means the hail gets tossed around in the updrafts for a long time before it falls, so by the time it hits your shingles, those stones are often the size of golf balls or bigger, and they’re coming down sideways with a real punch. It’s not just the big ones that hurt, either; even the smaller, dime-sized hail gets driven by those straight-line winds that we see with every squall line, and that combination chews up asphalt like sandpaper.

And it’s not just spring—we get a second nasty round in the fall, usually October, when those cold fronts slam into the last of the warm, humid Gulf air. That’s when you get the real wind events, the kind that peel back shingles and send debris flying like missiles. The problem is, most homes here have that standard 3-tab or architectural shingle, and they’re just not rated for the repeated abuse we dish out. I’ve seen roofs that look fine from the street, but when I get up there, the hail has knocked the granules off so bad that the fiberglass mat is baking in the Texas sun, and the wind has lifted the tabs just enough to let water sneak in under the edges. It’s a slow, sneaky killer, and by the time you notice a stain on the ceiling, the decking underneath is already rotten. Bottom line: if you live in Westminster, you’re not asking *if* you’ll need a roof, you’re asking *when*—and I’d rather you call me before the next storm, not after.