Hail record
The September 24, 2023 Hailstorm in Round Rock: Reports, Damage and What It Means for Your Roof
A record of what was reported, by whom, at what time, and what an owner should do with that information three years on.
What Happened
On Sunday night, September 24, 2023, a hailstorm crossed Round Rock, Brushy Creek, Georgetown and north Austin.
The National Weather Service says hail reached up to 4 inches across in Round Rock. Its damage estimate for Travis and Williamson counties was $600 million.
If your roof was on the house that night and has not been inspected since, it is worth an inspection now.
$600 millionNational Weather Service estimate, split evenly: $300 million in Travis County and $300 million in Williamson County.
$160 millionThe previous record, a 2009 hailstorm. The 1993 and 2005 storms came in at $125 million and $100 million.
750+ vehiclesDamaged at a single Round Rock car dealership, which put its loss at $27 million.
KXAN reported the estimate from the National Weather Service office in New Braunfels and described the storm as the costliest hailstorm in Austin-area history. The Weather Service's own storm summary adds that, with other severe storms in Central Texas on September 23 and 24, damage passed $1 billion, one of 28 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the United States that year.
Source: KXAN, "September hail storm caused $600 million in damage to Austin area, report says." Dealership figure: Reporting Texas, October 14, 2023.
The Reports, Minute by Minute
This table comes from the local storm reports issued by the National Weather Service office for Austin and San Antonio. The office collected them from trained spotters, broadcast media, a utility company, the mPING phone app and the public. The source of each row is shown because they are not equally reliable. A trained spotter's measurement is one thing. A photo posted to social media is another. Places are given the way the Weather Service writes them, as a distance and direction from a town center.
Source: National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio local storm reports, read from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet archive; The September 24, 2023 Round Rock / North Austin Hail Storm, National Weather Service StoryMap.
The Weather Service's storm summary says Round Rock took the largest hail of the storm, up to 4 inches across, with 3- to 4-inch stones reported across the city mainly between 9:15 and 9:25 PM. The 4-inch report itself came from the public, so this page also gives the largest trained-spotter measurement: 3 inches at 9:15 PM.
A report says where a stone was measured. It does not draw the edge of the storm. Two streets a mile apart can have very different roofs after the same storm, which is why the only way to know about your roof is to have someone look at it.
What It Did to Round Rock ISD's Roofs
The clearest public record of roof damage from that night is the school district's. In February 2024, Community Impact reported that the storm caused an estimated $70 million in damage to Round Rock ISD, that about two-thirds of the district's facilities had been identified as damaged or needing more investigation, and that repairs were expected to take two to three years.
The first buildings approved for roof repairs included Brushy Creek Elementary, Chisholm Trail Middle School and Round Rock High School.
School roofs are mostly large, low-slope commercial roofs, not house roofs. The record is useful for a different reason: it shows how wide the damage was, and that it took months of inspection to find all of it.
Source: Community Impact, "Round Rock ISD embarks on first phase of hail damage repairs," February 19, 2024.
Three Kinds of Roof, Three Years Later
A roof put on in late 2023 or 2024
It is young. The question is how well it was installed during the busiest months local roofers have had, with no city inspection. Check it against the owner's checklist.
The post-job checklistA roof that was never replaced or inspected
Bruised shingles lose granules, and the mat beneath ages faster in the sun. Trouble can show up as a leak several summers later.
Hail inspectionA house bought since 2023
The seller's disclosure may say when the roof was replaced. If it does not, a roofer can usually tell a three-year-old roof from a fifteen-year-old one in a few minutes.
Start with a lookOther Dated Storms in Round Rock
Central Texas roofs also take long summers of heat, and ice storms that bring tree limbs down, as in February 2023. Hail gets the attention because it arrives all at once.
Was Your Roof Up That Night?
Say so when you call. It is the first thing a contractor will want to know.
Call (737) 237-8867 Write It Down Instead