Roofing in Cleburne, Texas

Ask anyone in Cleburne about roofs and the 2013 tornado comes up quickly. At about 9:30 that night an EF3 tornado moved through the Johnson County seat. The National Weather Service's preliminary survey put its peak winds near 140 mph, its path at about 8.5 miles and its width at roughly 1,060 yards, more than half a mile.

The worst of it fell just east of Lake Pat Cleburne, the reservoir that supplies the city's water. CBS Texas reported that hundreds of homes lost their roofs, debris covered whole blocks, fences were flattened, and about 600 families were affected. The mayor declared a local disaster. It was one of 16 tornadoes the weather service confirmed across North Texas from that outbreak.

Storms have kept coming since. Coverage of a later storm, written around the 13th anniversary of the tornado, reported hail up to 4 inches falling across most of Johnson County and more than 1,000 homes losing power, about half of them in the Cleburne area.

Cleburne grew from Camp Henderson, a Civil War mustering point near Buffalo Creek. It became the county seat under its current name, for General Patrick Cleburne, in 1867 and incorporated in 1871. The Santa Fe railroad shops later became its largest employer for about a century, and that history is still visible in the buildings. The Cleburne Downtown Historic District, listed on the National Register, counts 89 contributing buildings from 1877 to 1968. A National Register nomination describes Prairie Avenue as still lined with substantial homes from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Roofs on houses that old raise questions that newer suburbs rarely face: several layers of old shingles, original board decking, brick chimneys with worn flashing, and porch roofs at a lower pitch than the main roof. A careful roofer looks at all of it before quoting. Cleburne had 31,352 residents at the 2020 census, and plenty of them live in newer neighborhoods too, where the questions are about hail and a first replacement.