How to Prepare Your Home for Storm Season in Fort Worth
On April 25th, baseball-sized hail fell on Fort Worth’s west side.
Westover Hills. White Settlement. Benbrook. The storm lasted less than twenty minutes. The repair calls lasted months.
This year proved how serious that window can get. From April 24 to April 29, six days of storms produced 287 reports of hail, wind, and tornado damage across North Texas, with 226 of those hail up to softball size and two people killed. NWS Fort Worth issued 111 warnings in that stretch alone, the most damaging run of storms the region had seen since June 2025.
Fort Worth’s spring storm window runs April through June. DFW averages six to eight significant hail events a year, and 65 percent of them happen in these three months. Homeowners who wait until the sky turns green are always a step behind.
It is not a one-year fluke. Tarrant County ranks among the top counties in the country for severe hail days since 2000, and Texas recorded more major hail events than any other state in 2024. For homeowners here, storm prep is not an occasional chore. It is a yearly one.
Knowing how to prepare your home for storm season in Fort Worth is not complicated. But most homeowners wait until after the storm to think about it. Here is what to do now, while you still have time.
Start With the Roof and Work Your Way Down
Walk the exterior and look for lifted or missing shingles, damaged flashing around vents and chimneys, or any soft spots along the roofline edge. After a hail storm, damage is not always visible from the ground. If you are not sure what you are looking at, a licensed roofer can do a quick inspection before the season peaks.
Next, clear the gutters. Debris causes water to back up under the eaves during heavy rain. In North Texas, spring storms often bring hail and flash flooding in the same system. Clean gutters handle both.
Trim branches that hang over the roof or near the house. A limb that looks stable today becomes a problem in 60 mph wind. These are the fixes that cost an afternoon and prevent a claim.
In our Pineapple Post newsletter in March, Cathy wrote it plainly: a little preparation now can save a lot of stress later.
What to Secure Before the Next System Rolls Through
Outdoor furniture, pots, grills, umbrellas, anything that can move in wind should be brought inside or anchored before a severe weather forecast. Hail does visible damage. Wind-driven debris does invisible damage to windows, siding, and doors that does not show up until the adjuster visits.
When a severe thunderstorm watch is posted for Tarrant County, you usually have several hours. That is enough time to walk the yard and bring in anything light enough to fly.
The habit of checking the forecast the night before a front moves through pays for itself once.
Document Your Home Before the Storm, Not After
Here is what happens every spring after a bad storm in Fort Worth. A homeowner inspects the roof, calls the contractor, files the claim. And then the settlement comes back lower than expected, or denied, because there is no record of what the house looked like before.
We have watched this happen. It is one of the most avoidable losses a homeowner faces.
Pull out your homeowner’s policy now and check your deductible. Most Fort Worth policies run from $1,000 to $2,500, sometimes a percentage of your home’s insured value. Know that number before you need it.
Then do this: photograph the exterior of your home today. Walk the roofline, the siding, the fence, the outdoor equipment. Date the photos. Keep them somewhere you can reach from your phone after a storm.
Those photographs are your evidence. In Texas, 73 percent of hail claims are underpaid or initially denied. The homeowners who successfully dispute those decisions almost always have dated before-and-after photos. The ones without them rarely do.
It takes fifteen minutes. It costs nothing
In our March Pineapple Post, Cathy said something that has always been true of the Fort Worth homeowners who do well: the most successful moves rarely happen overnight. They happen when people start preparing early.
That is as true of storm season as it is of selling. The houses that move quickly in Fort Worth are almost always the ones whose owners have been maintaining them for years. And the same walk-through that helps you prepare for spring often turns up the things worth doing before you list.
We do that walk-through all year, for sellers and for homeowners who are not going anywhere anytime soon. It is free, and it takes about an hour.
Schedule a free home walk-through with the Helen Painter team
Sign up for the Pineapple Post.
Fort Worth families keep coming back to Helen Painter.
They trust us to help them make the right decision.
Since 1958.
If Berkeley Place is where you want to be, we know how to help you get there. We know these streets. We know these homes. And we know how to help you make the right call.
