Wind is the quiet half of Texas storm damage. Hail gets the attention because you can hear it hitting the house, but straight-line winds do more roofs across North Texas in a typical year, and wind damage is far easier for an insurer to argue about. This page covers what wind actually does, how to spot it, and how to keep a legitimate claim from being written off as wear and tear.
Roof open to the weather right now? Call and we will get it covered before the next band moves through.
Homeowners tend to use storm damage and hail damage interchangeably. Insurers do not, and the distinction matters because they are separate perils with separate evidence and sometimes separate deductibles.
Across DFW, a single spring system can bring four different damage mechanisms in under an hour:
Wind does not simply push down on a roof. It lifts.
As air moves across a sloped surface it accelerates, and accelerating air drops in pressure. That creates suction on the upper surface of the roof while the air being forced into the attic through soffit vents and gable vents pushes upward from underneath. The roof gets pulled and pushed in the same direction at once. That is why wind damage concentrates at edges, ridges, corners and rakes, where the pressure differential is highest, rather than in the middle of a slope.
The practical consequence is important: a roof with no missing shingles can still have significant, claimable wind damage. Broken seals and creasing are functional damage. They are also invisible from the ground, which is why so many wind claims are never filed at all.
| Sustained gust | What typically happens |
|---|---|
| 45 to 57 mph | Below severe criteria. Older or already-unsealed shingles can lift. Loose flashing and ridge cap start to move. |
| 58 to 74 mph | The severe thunderstorm threshold. Seal strips break across exposed elevations, ridge cap lifts, gutters and fascia loosen. |
| 75 to 90 mph | Shingles missing along edges and rakes, decking exposed in patches, fence sections down, limbs on roofs. |
| 90 mph and above | Large field losses, decking lifted off rafters, structural damage. Comparable to a low-end tornado. |
Manufacturers rate shingles to a wind speed, commonly 110 or 130 mph, but those ratings assume correct installation with the specified nail pattern and a properly sealed starter course. A roof nailed high, nailed short, or installed in cold weather where the strips never fully bonded will fail far below its rating. In practice, installation quality decides wind performance more than the number on the bundle.
Take the photographs before anything is cleaned up. Fence sections, limbs, debris and the position of blown shingles all establish wind direction and severity. Once the yard is tidied, that evidence is gone, and the adjuster is left looking only at the roof.
If the roof is open, sequence matters more than anything else on this page.
Your policy contains a duty to mitigate. If you leave a roof open and the damage spreads, the insurer can decline the additional loss. Tarping is not optional diligence, it is a contractual obligation, and it protects you.
We tarp across DFW, including nights and weekends. If water is coming in, call rather than waiting for a form.
DFW has two distinct severe weather seasons, and knowing the pattern helps you plan inspections rather than react to them.
The spring peak runs March through June, with April and May the most active. This is when the Gulf moisture and the dryline collide most reliably, and it produces the large hail and the strongest straight-line winds of the year. If you only have one roof inspection done annually, late June is the right time for it, because it captures everything the spring threw at the house.
A second, smaller peak arrives in the autumn, usually September into early November, as the pattern reverses. Autumn storms tend to bring more wind and rain than large hail, and they arrive when the roof has just spent a summer at 140 degrees on the surface, which is when asphalt is most brittle and adhesive strips are most degraded.
Between them sits the North Texas summer, and the heat itself is a factor people underestimate. Repeated thermal cycling from over 140 degrees on a dark roof surface at midday down to the seventies overnight expands and contracts the shingle continuously. That cycling weakens the seal strips before any wind arrives. A roof that survived a 70 mph gust in April can fail at 55 mph in October, purely because of what the summer did to it in between.
Winter events are less frequent here but not absent, and the 2021 freeze demonstrated how quickly ice damming and failed flashing become an interior problem on roofs that were never designed for prolonged sub-freezing conditions.
Wind claims turn on evidence rather than opinion. The difference between a paid claim and a denied one is usually the quality of what you can put in front of the adjuster.
Pull the recorded conditions for your specific location and date. The National Weather Service Fort Worth office archives local storm reports, and airport observations from DFW, Dallas Love Field and Dallas Executive give recorded gust speeds. A claim that says a storm happened is weaker than one that says a 68 mph gust was recorded 4 miles away at 6.42pm on a named date.
Every phone call, the date, who you spoke to, what they said and any claim or reference number. If a file becomes contested months later, a contemporaneous log is far more persuasive than recollection, and it is the single easiest thing to do and the most commonly skipped.
An independent written estimate gives you something to compare the carrier’s scope against line by line. Without it you are accepting a number with no basis for questioning it. With it, gaps in the scope become specific and arguable rather than a general feeling that the offer seems low.
Wind claims are denied more often than hail claims, and almost always for one of four reasons.
Every policy excludes deterioration. Because unsealed and creased shingles can superficially resemble an old, tired roof, this is the most common denial. The counter is evidence: creasing follows a consistent direction across a slope, concentrates on the windward elevation, and appears alongside corroborating damage to fences and soft metals. Age-related failure is random and appears on every elevation equally. A report that documents the directional pattern is what defeats a wear and tear finding.
An adjuster doing a fast exterior look sees no missing shingles and closes the file. This is why a lift test matters. A sealed shingle resists; an unsealed one lifts freely with no resistance and no tearing. Marking and photographing unsealed tabs across a slope converts an invisible problem into documented evidence.
If shingles were nailed above the nail line or under-nailed, the insurer may argue the roof failed because of workmanship rather than wind. Workmanship is excluded under most policies. Whether that is fair depends on the wind speed on the day, and it is worth pushing back on when the recorded gusts were high.
North Texas gets multiple wind events every spring. Filing against the wrong date, or filing a year later against a storm nobody can now verify, stalls files. Tie the damage to a specific date with recorded local wind data.
Check your deductible before you file. Many Texas policies carry a separate wind and hail deductible expressed as a percentage of dwelling coverage rather than a flat sum. On a 400,000 dollar dwelling, a 2 percent wind deductible is 8,000 dollars. On a moderate wind claim that can exceed the loss, which is worth knowing before you open a file.
A handful of shingles off one elevation on an otherwise sound roof is a genuine repair. Two conditions have to hold: the replacement shingle must still be manufactured in a matching color and profile, and the surrounding field must actually be sealed. Replacing four visible shingles on a slope where thirty more are quietly unsealed buys nothing.
Replacement becomes the right answer when unsealing is widespread across a slope, when the shingle is discontinued so a repair leaves a mismatched patch, when decking underneath is damaged, or when the roof was already near the end of its life. Insurers apply their own thresholds to this, which is one more reason to have your own documented assessment.
Wind behaves differently on a flat or low slope commercial roof, and the failure modes are worth knowing if you manage a building rather than a house.
On a membrane roof, the danger is edge uplift. Wind catches the perimeter, gets underneath the membrane and peels it back like a lid. Once the edge flashing or termination bar lets go, a large area can be lost in a single event. Perimeter and corner zones carry the highest loads, which is why codes require heavier fastening there than in the field.
What we look for on a commercial storm inspection:
Business interruption is usually the larger exposure on a commercial claim, so speed of temporary repair matters more than on a home. Getting a building dried in quickly protects inventory, equipment and tenancy, and those losses can dwarf the roof itself.
We cover the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex from our DeSoto office, including Dallas, DeSoto, Duncanville, Cedar Hill, Lancaster, Red Oak, Glenn Heights, Ovilla, Midlothian, Waxahachie, Grand Prairie, Arlington, Mansfield, Irving, Garland, Mesquite, Rowlett, Richardson, Plano, Carrollton and the surrounding communities.
For roofing work outside storm damage, see what we do as a roofing contractor in Dallas. If water has already reached the interior, water damage restoration covers drying and rebuild.
Wind is a covered peril under most standard Texas homeowners policies. The complications are the separate wind and hail deductible many policies carry, and the wear and tear exclusion, which is where most disputes actually happen.
Less than most people expect. Seal strips can break in the 45 to 60 mph range on an older roof, well below the 58 mph severe thunderstorm threshold. Shingles usually start leaving above 75 mph. Installation quality shifts these numbers considerably.
Yes, and this is the most important thing on this page. Broken seals and creased tabs are functional wind damage and are invisible from the ground. A lift test is the only reliable way to find them.
Reasonable emergency mitigation is normally covered, and your policy generally requires you to prevent further damage. Keep receipts and photograph before and after.
Same day in most of DFW, and we work nights and weekends during active storm periods. Call rather than filling in a form if water is coming in.
Check your wind and hail deductible first. If it is a percentage of dwelling coverage it can be substantial, and on a small loss the claim may not clear it. We will tell you honestly after an inspection whether filing makes sense.
Call us and your insurer immediately. Tree impact is usually structural, involving rafters and decking rather than just shingles, and removal and roof repair are frequently handled as separate line items in the same claim.
Most Texas policies expect prompt notice and many apply a one year window from the date of loss. Because the clock runs from the storm date rather than from when you noticed, waiting is the risk.
Free storm inspection with a written report. If the roof is sound we will say so in writing, and you will have documentation for the next storm.