Seasonal

The roof that hail bruised in April is the roof that leaks in September

Almost every article about hurricane preparation is about the house: shutters, trees, generators, a plan. This one is about a single specific thing that happens to roofs on this coast, in a specific order, every year, and that almost nobody connects up until the ceiling is wet.

The sequence

Read the storm record by month and it separates cleanly. Hail is a spring peril here: of the 148 hail reports NOAA logged across the eight counties this site covers from 2021 onward, 89 percent fall between March and June, and the record is close to empty from July through February. Damaging thunderstorm wind peaks alongside it and then continues. The Atlantic hurricane season, meanwhile, runs from the first of June to the end of November, and the part of it that matters most for this coast is the back half.

So the year has a shape. Hail arrives first and does the damage you cannot see. Tropical systems arrive second and find it.

Why a bruise matters when it is not a hole

A hailstone knocks granules off a shingle and fractures the reinforcing mat underneath while leaving the surface broadly intact. Nothing leaks. There is no stain, no drip, no sign inside the house, and from the ground the roof looks exactly as it did in February. What hail damage looks like sets out how to tell that condition from the things it is confused with.

What has actually changed is two things. The shingle is now less able to keep water out where the mat is fractured, and the granules that were protecting the asphalt from ultraviolet exposure are gone from those spots — so the damage gets worse over the following months rather than staying put. A Gulf Coast summer is the harshest possible environment for an unprotected patch of asphalt.

Then the wind arrives, and it does not bring ordinary rain.

What wind-driven rain does that rain does not

A shingle roof sheds water. It is not sealed; it is a set of overlapping laps that work because water runs downhill fast enough never to travel back up under one. A tropical system breaks that arrangement in four ways at once:

1. The rain is close to horizontal. It is driven at the roof surface rather than falling onto it, so it hits the exposed edge of every lap instead of running over the top of it.
2. There is a pressure difference across the roof. Wind moving over the plane lowers the pressure above it, and the higher pressure underneath pushes water upslope through any gap it can find. This is the part people find hardest to believe and it is the part that does the damage.
3. It lasts for hours. A thunderstorm gives a lap a few minutes of abuse. A landfalling system gives it half a day.
4. The wind is lifting shingles at the same time. Uplift opens the very laps the water is being pushed into, and a tab that was already unsealed by an earlier storm is a tab that is now standing open in the rain.

The two reference events, and what each one taught

Hurricane Harvey came ashore near Port Aransas late on 25 August 2017 as a category 4 and then stalled, and what it did to Greater Houston over the following days was rainfall on a scale the region had never recorded. For most houses that was a flood loss, not a roof loss — and flood is not covered by any homeowners policy. It is the reason so many people here learned the difference between policies the hard way.

Hurricane Beryl came ashore near Matagorda early on 8 July 2024 as a category 1, crossed the metro through the day, and did its damage with wind. The National Weather Service logged measured gusts in the eighties of miles per hour at Houston airport stations and higher on the Brazoria County coast. A category 1 is the mildest hurricane there is, and it was a region-wide roofing event — which is the useful lesson. You do not need a major hurricane to lose a roof. You need a marginal roof and a long afternoon of wind.

What to do, and when

1. After any spring hail, get it looked at — even with no leak

   This is the whole argument of this page. Bruising does not announce itself, and the four to six weeks after an event is when it is easiest to document and cheapest to deal with. Check the recorded storm dates or Storm Check for what was logged near your ZIP code.

2. Fix the perimeter before June

   Uplift is highest at the eaves, rakes and ridge. Lifted or unsealed edge courses, missing ridge cap, loose drip edge and a gutter pulled away at one end are the things a sustained blow will take, and they are all cheap in May. See wind damage vs wear.

3. Deal with the penetrations

   Pipe boots perish early in this ultraviolet load, and a perished boot in a horizontal rainstorm is an open hole. They are an afternoon’s work and they are the single most common source of a storm leak that was not really caused by the storm.

4. Look hard at the low-slope sections

   The patio cover, the carport, the rear addition. These are where shingles are least able to resist wind-driven rain, and where a shallow lap gets defeated first — see roof pitch.

5. Clear the drainage

   Gutters, downspouts, valleys and any flat section with a drain. High rainfall intensity plus a blocked outlet puts standing water where the roof is least able to hold it, and a full gutter in high wind tears off the fascia.

6. Get your paperwork in order

   Know which policy covers wind and hail, know whether it is a percentage deductible and what the number actually is, and know whether you have flood cover at all. If you are on the coast and need windstorm cover, note that you cannot buy a TWIA policy once there is a hurricane in the Gulf.

7. Photograph the roof while it is intact

   A set of dated before photographs from the ground, on every elevation, costs ten minutes and is worth a great deal when you later need to show what changed.

After a system has passed

• Deal with water first. Contain it inside, move what matters, and photograph everything before you clean up. Emergency tarping stops the loss getting bigger while you work out what happened.
• Switch the circuit off if water is anywhere near a light fitting or an electrical box.
• Separate the perils before you report anything. Wind and hail damage to the roof, and rising water, are different policies with different adjusters and different deductibles. Getting this right first saves a week.
• Do not sign anything at the door. A declared disaster is exactly when out-of-area operations arrive, and when a disaster has been declared it is against the law for contractors from outside your area to ask for payment before they start work. See choosing a roofer.
• Expect the adjuster to ask about earlier events. If there was spring hail, it is in the record and they can see it. The honest account — hail in April, wind-driven rain in September, here is the documentation for both — is a much stronger position than a surprised one.
• On the coast, settle the windstorm inspection before the tear-off, not after. See windstorm cover and TWIA.

What this does not mean

It does not mean every spring hail report near your ZIP code damaged your roof, and it does not mean every summer leak traces back to April. Hail falls in narrow swaths, a report is a point observation rather than a survey, and plenty of roofs come through both seasons untouched. What the sequence does mean is that the two things are worth thinking about together rather than separately, and that the cheapest moment to act on the first one is long before the second one arrives.

And nothing here predicts what a carrier will decide about anything. What you control is the documentation and the timing.