Recorded events
The wind record for Costa Mesa
Costa Mesa does not get hail in any quantity — five years of radar detections found none within ten miles. It does get wind, on a handful of days a year, and those are the days roofs are lost here.
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Hail
Across 61 months of NEXRAD records, no hail-bearing storm cell has been detected within ten miles of Costa Mesa. That is normal for this part of California and it is the reason roof claims here are almost always wind, water or age rather than impact.
Wind
Over 5 years of daily records at this location, the highest modelled gust was about 53 mph, below the 58 mph severe threshold but well into the range that finds anything already lifted or loose. There were 35 days above 39 mph and 15 above 45 mph in that period, concentrated in January, February, and March.
| Date | Peak gust |
|---|---|
| 18 February 2026 | 53 mph |
| 13 March 2025 | 47 mph |
| 20 January 2025 | 47 mph |
| 7 January 2025 | 47 mph |
| 6 November 2024 | 51 mph |
| 29 October 2023 | 47 mph |
| 22 February 2023 | 52 mph |
| 11 October 2021 | 49 mph |
What to look at after a storm
The ridge and the edges
Ridge caps sitting proud, a line of shingles along the rake that no longer lies flat, a lifted starter course at the eave: these are wind signatures, and each one is an opening for the next storm rather than a cosmetic complaint.
Granules where they should not be
A cupful of granules at the bottom of a downspout after a storm is not proof of impact — roofs shed granules as they age — but a sudden change is worth photographing with the date on it. What matters is the difference from last month, which is why photographing a sound roof now is not a wasted hour.
What the street is doing
Neighbourhoods built at once wear out at once, so a run of work on one street is often a cohort reaching its age rather than a storm. Both are worth knowing about; they are not the same thing.
Flashing, chimneys and skylights
Most storm leaks are not through the field of the roof. They are at a junction — a chimney, a skylight, a wall abutment, a valley — where something is meant to be sealed and is not any more. Wind opens those seams before it opens anything else.
What landed on it
Wind-blown debris causes a surprising share of storm damage, and it is the one kind of damage that is genuinely obvious once somebody looks.
Where these numbers come from
Hail detections come from NOAA NCEI’s Severe Weather Data Inventory (NEXRAD product nx3hail) within 10 miles of Costa Mesa. Radar sizes hail in a storm cell; it does not observe what landed on any particular roof. Gust figures are daily maxima from the ERA5 reanalysis archive at this city’s coordinates, which is a model of the weather rather than a reading from an instrument in the neighbourhood. Both are useful for dates and for scale, and neither is evidence about your roof. Last refreshed 2026-08-31.
Questions after a storm
There was a storm near me. Do I have damage?
A recorded storm nearby is a reason to have the roof looked at, not evidence that anything happened to it. The useful first check costs nothing: dents in the soft metal around the roof, and a look in the attic on a bright day.