Broken Arrow Roof Repair After the Wind
Twice in Broken Arrow's storm record, the wind did not just damage roofs. The surveys say it blew the shingles off them.
Two Storms That Took Shingles Off Roofs Here
Most storm surveys are about trees. Two of Broken Arrow's are about shingles. On July 14, 2016, a 65 knot thunderstorm "snapped numerous large tree limbs, blew shingles off the roofs of homes, and damaged privacy fencing." Just over a year later, on August 6, 2017, a 61 knot storm "snapped large tree limbs and blew shingles off the roofs of homes."
Those are two separately documented shingle-loss events in one town, at wind speeds of about 75 and 70 miles an hour. Neither was a tornado. Both were the kind of summer thunderstorm Broken Arrow sees most years, and over the ten years we looked at, its reporting point logged 75 significant events, second only to Tulsa among the eighteen towns we serve.
The 2016 survey also records damaged privacy fencing, which says something useful: the wind was destructive at fence height, not just up at the ridgeline, so every exposed edge of a Broken Arrow house took it that night, from the gutters to the rake trim.
On a roof that lost shingles in either of those storms, the ones that blew off are the obvious damage. The bigger problem is the ones next to them that lifted, broke their seal and settled back down, because those look normal from the yard and fail one at a time over the next few storms.
Baseball Hail, May 2024
On May 21, 2024, the Broken Arrow reporting point logged hail at 3.00 inches, with the survey note "Hail slightly larger than baseball size damaged vehicles, homes, and businesses." Later the same day it logged a second event at 2.50 inches, tennis ball size.
Three inch hail, the size logged at Broken Arrow that day, is in a different class from the golf ball storms most of the metro gets. It does not just bruise a shingle. It can crack it through, split ridge caps, dent and tear metal vents and flashing, and break skylights. Gutters on the side the storm came from tend to take dents you can see from the street, which is often the first clue a homeowner gets.
The 2.50 inch event later that afternoon matters as well. A Broken Arrow roof that came through the first storm with cracked shingles took a second round of hail before anyone could get up there, so both storms belong in the same inspection.
Twenty-seven hail events of an inch or larger are on the Broken Arrow record over those ten years, but May 21, 2024 is the one to ask about. If your roof was here that day and has not been inspected since, start there.
From Katy Railway Stop to Tulsa's Largest Suburb
Muscogee Creek settlers of the Thlikachka tribal town, whose name means Broken Arrow, arrived between 1828 and 1838. They named their new home after the town they had left on the Chattahoochee River in Alabama. The modern townsite was platted along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, the Katy, and Broken Arrow was incorporated on May 4, 1903.
The early downtown was a farm town's commercial core: three banks, cotton gins and grain elevators. Broken Arrow Centennial Park, dedicated on October 19, 2002, marks the founding date of October 16, 1902, and the Broken Arrow Historical Museum keeps the rest of the story. The town that grew from there had 113,540 people at the 2020 Census.
Where We Work in Broken Arrow
We work all over Broken Arrow, but the places the storm record names are the ones we can describe honestly, so that is where this starts.
E 21st Street and S 261st E Avenue
On June 17, 2023, a 70 knot storm "blew down a tree into a road, blocking the entrance to a neighborhood near E 21st Street and S 261st E Avenue." That was one of three 70 knot records in Broken Arrow that afternoon, and another of them "removed a portion of the roof of a building." When a neighborhood's own entrance is closed by a fallen tree, the roofs inside it took the same wind. If you live out that way and had nobody look after June 2023, the damage that matters most is the kind you cannot see from the driveway.
The Wagoner County side
The strongest record from that day, 75 knots, about 86 miles an hour, was logged in Wagoner County, and the survey totals the county's cost at "at least $543,000 in debris removal and damage to the utility infrastructure across the county." That figure is public cleanup and power lines, not anyone's roof claim, but it gives a sense of how hard that storm hit.
Around Broken Arrow Freshman Academy
Also on June 17, 2023, a 65 knot record reads simply "damaged the roofs of many homes," and a separate event that day destroyed the press box at the Broken Arrow Freshman Academy football field. A press box is a light structure up high in open ground, exactly the kind of thing that shows where the strongest gusts ran.
Downtown and the old Katy line
The older commercial buildings in the original downtown, the core that grew up around the banks, gins and elevators along the Katy, are a different job from the subdivisions. Older commercial blocks commonly carry low-slope roofs where drainage, not shingles, decides whether the roof leaks. Commercial roof work there gets scheduled around the business.
Next door
We cover Bixby, Coweta and Tulsa from the same Jenks shop, so a property on the edge of town is no further for us.
Suburban Growth and Roof Age
A town does not go from a railway stop to 113,540 people slowly, and the way Broken Arrow grew matters for its roofs. Subdivisions go up a section at a time, so whole streets get built in the same two or three years, with the same shingles, by the same crews.
That means a hailstorm does not age one roof in Broken Arrow. It ages a whole street at once, and the street then reaches the end of its roof life together. When the roofers' yard signs start appearing up and down your block, that is the cohort arriving at its end, and your roof was built in the same window as theirs.
Working With Your Adjuster
After a day like May 21, 2024, adjusters in Broken Arrow work through a backlog, and what gets paid is what gets documented. Baseball hail damage on a roof is real but not always obvious on a fast walk, especially on the slopes that faced away from the storm.
On a Broken Arrow roof we photograph every slope first, before anyone calls the insurer, so you know whether you have a claim before you file one. Then we meet the adjuster at the house and point to the specific damage. You file the claim and you decide on the settlement; we stay out of the negotiating. The whole process is on our insurance claim help page.
Book a Free Inspection
Broken Arrow is about ten miles from our shop, and the inspection costs nothing. If May 2024 or either of the wind storms touched your roof, the photos will show it.