Catoosa Roof Repair After 100 MPH Gusts
The highest wind speed in our entire Oklahoma storm record was logged here, on one June afternoon in 2023.
June 2023: Gusts to 100 MPH
On June 17, 2023, the Catoosa reporting point logged two records at 87 knots, and the survey describes wind "likely gusting to at least 100 mph at times." That storm "resulted in at least $657,000 in debris removal and damage to the utility infrastructure across the county." Of every wind speed logged at all eighteen Oklahoma towns we serve between 2016 and 2026, 87 knots is the highest.
A hundred miles an hour is past the point where shingles merely lift. At that speed wind gets under the edge of a roof and pulls whole sections away, strips ridge caps, and throws debris hard enough to puncture what it hits. The $657,000 figure is public cleanup and power lines, not anyone's roof claim, but it tells you what that afternoon was like.
On a Catoosa roof after a storm like that, the first place worth checking is the edge along the side that faced the wind: the drip edge, the starter course and the first row of shingles above it. That is where a 100 mph gust gets its grip, and an edge that lifted even slightly has given the next storm somewhere to start.
Catoosa did not get a break afterward. On August 13, 2023, less than two months later, a 70 knot storm brought gusts the survey estimated "in excess of 80 mph." Earlier, on July 14, 2016, the town logged a 75 knot event. Across ten years the reporting point recorded 30 significant storms, and the biggest of them are among the strongest in the metro.
The Blue Whale and the Inland Port
Catoosa started as a cow town under the Cherokee Nation, and its post office opened in 1883 after the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad arrived in the early 1880s. It had 7,440 people at the 2020 Census.
Two landmarks put it on the map. The Blue Whale of Catoosa, built by Hugh S. Davis and finished in July 1972, is one of the best-known roadside attractions on Route 66. It was part of a roadside zoo called the ARK that closed in the late 1980s, and the Chamber of Commerce reconditioned it in 1996. The Port of Catoosa opened in 1971, which made Tulsa the furthest-inland port city in the United States.
Between Two Hills
The name comes from the Cherokee Ga-du-si or Ga-tu-si, interpreted variously as "between two hills," "on the hill," or as a reference to one prominent hill nearby. The sources do not agree on which, but all three readings point to high ground. The town sits at about 623 feet.
High ground matters to a Catoosa roof for the same reason the June 2023 gusts did. A house on a rise has nothing upwind to break the force of a storm, and wind speeds up as it crosses a crest. If your Catoosa house sits on a hill, its ridge, rakes and windward slope take the most strain, and that is where shingles start lifting first.
From the Port to Pine Street
Catoosa's landmarks run from heavy industry at the water to a frontier graveyard on Pine Street, and the roofs between them are just as varied.
The Port of Catoosa
The port is industrial ground, and the buildings around a port tend to be large, low-slope or metal roofs with a lot of surface for wind to work on. After a storm at 87 knots, those are roofs where an edge that lifted a few inches can peel back much further in the next storm, which arrived here less than two months later. We do commercial roof repair on that kind of building and schedule around the operation. If your building dates from the port's early years in the 1970s, its roof has very likely been replaced at least once already, and the work of earlier crews is worth checking before anyone quotes a repair.
The Blue Whale and Fort Spunky
Near the Blue Whale entrance on Route 66, a marker shows the site of Fort Spunky, a mail and stagecoach relay station. If you own an older commercial building along Catoosa's stretch of the old highway, it likely has a flat or low-slope roof where drainage decides everything, and a clogged scupper on a roof like that turns one storm into a ceiling leak.
193rd and Pine Street
Dick Duck Cemetery, at 193rd and Pine Street, is the burial site of the outlaw Bluford "Blue" Duck. It is one of the few street corners the town's history names outright, and any house near it saw the same June 2023 gusts as the rest of Catoosa.
Hail anywhere in town
On March 27, 2020, Catoosa logged hail at 1.50 inches with the survey note "Large hail damaged the roofs of homes." It is the largest of nine hail events of an inch or more on the town's record, and hail damage that old will have spent every summer since turning into cracks.
Neighbors
From our Jenks shop we also cover Claremore, Verdigris and Tulsa.
Free Roof Inspection in Catoosa
After Catoosa's 100 mph gusts, a roof that looks fine from the street deserves a closer look. We will do it for free and show you every photo.