The toll a Morris County year takes on a roof up here
A hilltop town like Randolph gives a roof no break across the calendar. Summer arrives humid and hot, and the heat that stacks up in an unvented attic cooks asphalt shingles from underneath while the sun works them from above. Then the storms roll through the highlands, the fast July microbursts that drive rain sideways into any flashing that is not tight and pelt the field with hail, and later the long soaking nor'easters that load the roof with wind and water for hours at a stretch. A roof that has been quietly tiring through the warm months suddenly has to shed a serious volume of water under real pressure, and that is the moment its weak points let go.
Winter is where the Randolph elevation really tells. We sit high enough to hold more snow, longer, than the valley floor, and that snow becomes a load the roof has to carry and then a meltwater problem as it goes. When snow sits on a warm-attic roof, it melts, runs to the cold eave, and refreezes into an ice dam that shoves water back up under the shingles. The same freeze-thaw swing that builds those dams pries at every small crack and gap, opening each a little wider with every cold snap. The leak that surfaces in February was very often born in a brittle flashing detail the previous August, which is exactly why we push so hard to inspect before the cold arrives, while there is still time to seal the vulnerable spots ahead of the first real snow.