Harris County

Roofing in Houston

City limits that reach into five counties and well over a hundred ZIP codes, with housing that runs from 1920s bungalows inside the Loop to subdivisions finished last year.

The housing stock

Houston was founded by land investors on 30 August 1836 at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou, and incorporated as a city in June 1837. It grew as a regional trading center through the nineteenth century, then very fast in the twentieth: the port and the railroads, the collapse of Galveston as the state's primary port after the 1900 hurricane, the Ship Channel that followed, and the Texas oil boom. The Texas Medical Center and the Johnson Space Center broadened the economy in the middle of the century.

Inside the 610 Loop there are bungalows and small masonry houses from the 1920s to the 1940s, most of them altered or extended at least once, with heavy teardown-and-rebuild activity on top. Beyond it the overwhelming majority of the stock is post-1960 slab-on-grade frame, one and two stories, with large simple planes, large attic volumes, and shallow eaves.

What we look at on a roof in Houston

• The address decides who issues the permit. A great deal of mail addressed Houston is outside the city limits in unincorporated Harris County, which is a different office with different paperwork, and getting that wrong stalls a job before it starts.
• Attic ventilation on post-1960 slab houses: a big attic volume over a conditioned ceiling in humid air, where the intake at the soffit is far more often the missing half than the exhaust at the ridge.
• South and west slopes ageing ahead of north and east ones. Ultraviolet load and daily thermal cycling do most of the work on an asphalt roof here, so the date on the permit is not the age of every slope.
• Wind uplift at the perimeter, which is decided by the starter course, the drip edge and the nailing pattern rather than by what is printed on the shingle wrapper.
• Inner-loop houses with added rear sections, where a low-slope addition meets a steeper original roof and that transition is the leak.

What the storm record actually shows

These counts come from the NOAA Storm Events record for hail and thunderstorm wind, from 2021 to 2 June 2026. Tropical systems are logged under different event types and are not in these numbers at all, so Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 does not appear below, and Harvey in August 2017 and Ike in September 2008 are both before the window opens. Read the figures as a floor rather than a ceiling.

Within five miles of the center of its ZIP codes, NOAA recorded 64 hail events and 112 thunderstorm-wind events. The largest hail on record is 2″ on 23 June 2023. The strongest recorded gust is 90 kt (104 mph), on 16 May 2024.

Wind outnumbers hail in this record, which is why the starter course, the drip edge and the nailing pattern do more for a roof in Houston than the impact rating printed on the shingle wrapper. Wind damage also does not announce itself from the ground: a creased or unsealed shingle lies flat and looks perfectly normal until the next storm lifts it off.

Neither number describes the thing that ages a roof here fastest, which is simply the climate. Ultraviolet load, daily thermal cycling and humid air moving through the attic will take an asphalt roof to the end of its service life without a single recorded storm passing over it, and the south and west slopes get there first.

Storm Check lists every one of these events with dates, sizes and distances for each of these ZIP codes.

What we do here

• 01Roof inspectionPhotographs slope by slope and a written condition report you keep.
• 02Roof replacementTear-off to the deck, and the layers underneath specified in writing.
• 03Roof repairTracing the leak to the defect rather than sealing the stain.
• 04Storm damageWind and hail assessment documented against the dates NOAA recorded.