HAIL DAMAGE REPAIR — WAXAHACHIE, TX

June 14, 2023 — 5:25 to 5:47 PM

THE FAMOUS WEEK MADE A STOP NOBODY REMEMBERS

Ask anyone in DFW about June 2023 and they’ll tell you about the giants: the five-inch stones that fell near Mansfield on the 12th and at Sanger on the 15th, the pair that still tops the regional record. Almost nobody mentions Wednesday the 14th — because Wednesday belonged to Ellis County, and the cameras were pointed the other way. The log remembers: eight reports between 5:25 and 5:47 PM. Quarters east of town to open. Ping-pong at 5:29. A 2.50-inch entry two miles south-southeast at 5:36. A trained spotter’s “ping pong ball to tennis ball sized hail in Waxahachie” at 5:45 — and, the same minute, a second spotter’s entry northeast of town, logged at 3.00 inches, whose remark reads “3.75 inch hail measured on a photo.” Hen-egg stones closed the half hour at 5:47.

A storm that famous week anywhere north of the Trinity would have spawned a hundred news segments and a thousand claims. Here it spawned neither — and unremembered hail becomes unclaimed hail. We still find June 2023’s signature on Ellis County trade-ins: shallow tennis-ball craters on roofs and deck lids, discovered by an appraiser years after the storm, priced against the owner instead of the carrier that owed for them. If a vehicle you owned in June 2023 sat outside that Wednesday and was never read under proper light, that claim is still legally alive — the date of loss is the storm’s, not the discovery’s — and the reading costs nothing.

Gingerbread Town, Working Ledger

A COUNTY SEAT’S RECORD — ODD MONTHS, NAMED CORNERS

Between the famous Wednesday and today, Waxahachie’s table reads like the town itself: specific, practical, and indifferent to the calendar. The strangest row is the earliest riser — February 27, 2017, a winter Monday, quarters at I-35E and US 287 by 10:50 AM and “nickel hail covering the ground at the Best Buy” a mile east by 11:00. The heaviest recent rows name their corners too: two-inch hail “at US 77 & Dart” on May 30, 2024 — six days after a spotter watched “a large quantity of hail falling, a lot of quarters with some golf balls mixed in… covering the ground” west of town. And the metro’s celebrated September 24, 2023 storm hit the county seat in two rounds three hours apart — golf balls at 7:38 PM, then a second wave past 9:30 — the kind of double-tap that turns one evening into two arguments with an adjuster unless the timeline is documented properly.

Upstream, the pattern this county runs on: five of these storms signed Midlothian’s table first and arrived here 18 to 34 minutes later down the US 287 spine — the 2020 pre-dawn line (Midlothian 5:33 AM, here 6:07), the 2018 evening (7:12, then 7:30), the 2025 walk (7:15, then 7:38). For the thousands who live in one town and park in the other, the two pages are one claim tool read together.

The Public Record

WAXAHACHIE’S HAIL RECORD — 1″+ DAYS SINCE 2015

Each row is a National Weather Service local storm report filed under Waxahachie’s name or logged within five miles of the courthouse — a ring that runs the I-35E and US 287 interchange country and the neighborhoods around the square. Sizes and remarks are the log’s own; where a remark outran its logged size, both are printed.

Fourteen rows, three golf-ball evenings, a hen egg, a February morning — and one Wednesday that outweighs the rest of the table combined. The Midlothian page holds the upstream clocks; the Mansfield page the record the famous week is named for; and the month-by-month math lives in the DFW hail-season data guide, built from the same federal log.

After The Storm

THE SQUARE DRAWS TOURISTS. STORMS DRAW A DIFFERENT CROWD.

A courthouse town knows its salesmen, and the post-storm variety is easy to spot once you’ve seen the circuit: the “catastrophe team” canopy in a lot off the 287 bypass, door-hangers through the historic districts where every house has a story and every driveway an uncovered car, the knock that opens with the neighbor’s name. After the September 2023 double-tap the circuit worked this town for weeks — and its favorite trick was quoting the evening’s first round to people whose damage came in the second, a mismatch an adjuster will spot even if the homeowner doesn’t.

The paperwork rules are where the pretenders fail, and our hail-scams guide holds all nine tells against their statutes. Keep two by the door: any contract signed at your house can be unwound in writing until midnight of the third business day under Texas’s home-solicitation law, and every “we’ll take care of your deductible” wink describes Tex. Penal Code §35.02 insurance fraud carried out under your policy number. Deductible help with a paper trail looks different: the first $1,000 on qualifying hail claims, funded by our margin, printed as a line item your carrier reads with everything else.

The Insurance Side

OLD STORMS, LIVE CLAIMS — AND ONE INTERSTATE BETWEEN US

The claim most Waxahachie drivers should be thinking about isn’t from this spring — it’s from June 2023 or September 2023, still sitting undocumented on a roof panel. Texas comprehensive coverage handles that gracefully: the date of loss is the storm’s date, late discovery is routine (carriers see it constantly on hail), and no fault or surcharge event attaches to you. The execution matters more with older damage, though — an adjuster meets a two-year-old dent field with more questions — so the file has to carry the answers: a raking-light dent map whose pattern matches the logged storm, panel photography, and the specific dated row from the table above. That’s the discipline our State Farm shop report documents claim by claim, and it’s what wins the supplement rounds where hail money actually lives. Your legal footing is the same two lines as everywhere in Texas: §1952.301 — the shop is your choice; 28 TAC §5.7016 — weather claims can’t cost you renewal. Premium mechanics are in the rates guide, plainly told.

Geography is the easy part: Waxahachie and our floor share one road. Open the claim, and the swap does the rest — our driver brings a loaner to the square, the driveway or the office, takes the vehicle up I-35E, and reverses the trade when it’s finished. One deductible, once — the first $1,000 of it ours on qualifying hail claims — and the car comes home with the file that answers every question before it’s asked.

Driving it yourself is one road: I-35E north, through Dallas, to the Main Street exit in Lewisville — 693 Metro Park Cir, Lewisville, TX 75057, about 55–65 minutes and not a single highway change. Open Mon–Fri 8:30–5:30, Sat 10–1. For collisions, deer strikes and the rest, our collision repair page covers the whole shop.

Or keep your day and trade keys at the curb: the county seat sits inside our 75-mile service radius, and the standard Waxahachie repair is a two-handshake affair — our driver arrives with a fleet loaner and departs with your car, then the handshakes reverse when it’s done. Historic-district street parking, bypass office lots and rural addresses off 287 all work; the repair itself reaches you as photographs, teardown to delivery. First move is one picture to (817) 907-2822.