Marshall Hit 112 mph Last December. Front Range Wind Season Starts in November, and the Clock on Those Roofs Runs Out in Seven Weeks.

On the afternoon of December 19, 2025, a station three miles northwest of Marshall, between Boulder and Superior, measured a gust of 112 mph. Sunshine Canyon hit 110 at five in the morning. Niwot took 102 at lunch. Two days earlier the same windstorm had already put 102 mph at Rocky Flats on Highway 93, 98 in Arvada, 91 in Boulder and 83 at Rocky Mountain Metro Airport in Broomfield. Those are National Weather Service readings from the Boulder office's event table, not radar estimates.

Xcel cut power on purpose to keep the lines from starting a fire. By Friday, news reports put roughly 89,000 customers in the dark across six counties. Trees came down on the CU campus, a light pole went over in Superior's Rock Creek North, and power poles snapped along Highway 93 north of 64th Parkway.

Count the roofing companies that built a route off that storm. We could not find many. And that is the point of this post, because the next one is due.

The Front Range has two seasons. Roofers only work one.

Colorado hail runs April through September and peaks in June. We wrote the off-season math in September, the week after the last big stone. What that post did not cover is the other season, the one that starts now.

Downslope windstorms are a Front Range specialty. A strong jet crosses the Divide, the air accelerates down the east face, and the strip from Fort Collins through Loveland, Lyons, Boulder, Louisville, Superior, Golden and Arvada takes gusts that would be a named storm on a coast. NCAR puts the downslope window at October through March. The state climatologist calls December through February the windy season. NWS Boulder forecasters put it more simply: December and January are the two peak months.

The record at NCAR's Mesa Lab in Boulder is 147 mph, from 1971. The Marshall Fire day, December 30, 2021, pushed 115 at the base of the foothills. Last December put triple digits on the metro side of the line twice in three days.

What 60, 80 and 100 mph do to a roof

A roofer should know the shingle ratings better than the adjuster does, because this is where the claim is won or lost.

Two things matter more than the label. First, the rating assumes the seal strip is bonded. A shingle that was installed after mid-October, or one that was lifted once and never re-sealed, has no rating at all until the sun welds it back down, and asphalt does not self-seal reliably below about 40 degrees. Second, the rating assumes the nails are where the manufacturer drew them. A 15-year roof with a few high nails and brittle seal strips fails at speeds the label says it should shrug off.

So the December 17 readings sort the metro into three bands:

• 60 to 70 mph along I-70 through Denver, at DIA, in Longmont, Loveland, Berthoud, Erie, Louisville and Golden. That is past the 58 mph High Wind Warning threshold and past every Class A three-tab. Expect creased tabs and lifted ridge cap on older roofs, mostly repairs, some replacements on roofs that were already tired.
• 80 to 100 mph in Boulder, Broomfield, Arvada and along Highway 93. Above Class D, at or above Class F on an aged roof. Missing shingles on the windward slopes, torn ridge, displaced flashing, fence and tree damage on the same lot that corroborates the event.
• 100 mph and up near Marshall, Rocky Flats, Niwot and the canyon mouths. Every shingle on the market is out of its rating. Whole slopes.

Our wind scoring runs the same logic in numbers. A 58 mph gust at the parcel earns the same severity as radar-estimated 1.25-inch hail, and 75 mph and up scores like a 2.5-inch stone. The gust our model assigns to a parcel is an estimate from the nearest measurements, not a reading on the roof, which is why the route still needs eyes.

The seven-week problem

Here is the part that makes this a November post and not a January one.

Most homeowner policies want a claim reported within about a year of the date of loss. The language varies and the policy governs, but that one-year rule of thumb is how we lay out the 12-month clock. Apply it to last winter:

The December roofs have roughly seven weeks of runway. A homeowner in Louisville or Arvada who lost ridge cap and a dozen tabs in December, tarped it or ignored it, and has not filed, is the most urgent lead on the Front Range right now. Not because the damage got worse. Because the paperwork is about to get harder.

March has more time. The Fort Collins corridor, where a condo building lost its roof and semis went over on I-25, is five months fresh and barely worked.

How to run a wind route in winter

A wind route is a line, not a cluster. The December gust table shows why: the damage follows the foothills from Lyons down to Golden, with fingers out along the canyon mouths and the I-70 corridor. You drive the line and stop where the fences and the ridge caps tell you to.

Winter changes the channel, not the effort. Denver loses more than three hours of knockable daylight between July and December, so the list has to be tighter and the phone and mailbox carry more of the load. That makes the Do Not Call rules a daily concern, and it is why every RoofLeads morning list is DNC-checked before a number is shown.

Filter the line on three things: gust band at the parcel, roof age from county records, and whether the owner lives there. A 2022 laminate in the 60 mph band is not a lead. A 2008 three-tab in the 90 mph band with an owner-occupant is, and it was a lead in January too. Nobody called.

The math on one small city

Louisville measured 61 mph on December 17 and sits a few miles east of the 112 mph reading on December 19. It has about 9,000 homes and a Small City territory runs 399 dollars a month. Hold it from November through March for about 2,000 dollars.

A Front Range insurance re-roof commonly lands between 18,000 and 30,000 dollars. At 22,000 and a 30 percent gross margin, one signed roof is about 6,600 dollars of gross profit, which covers the whole winter three times over. That is arithmetic, not a forecast. Your close rate and your ticket are yours, and nothing here promises anybody a job. Put your own numbers in the cost-per-job calculator.

Boulder itself is a Large City at 1,299 dollars, with 45,000 homes under last December's 91 mph. Superior and Golden are Small. Broomfield, Lafayette and Erie are Mid. Fort Collins and Loveland are Large, and the Boulder and Larimer county bundles are both open on the pricing page.

The short version

Colorado's hail stopped on August 19. Its wind has not started yet, and when it does it will land on the same foothills strip it landed on last December, in the same two peak months. The December 2025 roofs have until about mid-December to file. The March roofs have until spring. Both lists are sitting still, nothing new is falling on them, and one roofer per city gets them.

Check what fell near you on the Colorado hail map, then check the territory map. If your city is open, it is first come.