It is not unusual for a roof to lose a few shingles when a really strong wind blows through town. Often, you can just have those missing shingles replaced and move on with your day. But what if your roof keeps losing shingles, again and again, every time it gets a bit windy? The neighbors' homes may all be fine, but yours never is. There may be an underlying problem that is making your shingles weak. Here are some possibilities.
Multiple Lifted Shingles
Does your roof have a lot of shingles that are already partially lifted and loosened? Maybe each time the wind blows in, it catches under the edge of a few more of those shingles and tears them off completely. Lifted shingles are common along the edges of roofs in snowy areas where ice dams often form and damage the edges of roofs. If you look across the roof and see that many shingles are not laying flat, have a roofing contractor come replace them all before they go missing completely.
Rotten Roof Deck
The problem might not be with the shingles themselves, but instead with the material that the shingles are connected to. If the roof deck, which underlies your shingles, is rotting and weak, then roofing nails may easily be pried out of it. You can generally tell whether your roof deck is rotting by going into the attic and looking at the underside of it. If you see any dark, moist, or discolored splotches, rot is often to blame. A roofer will need to remove shingles from the damaged section, replace that part of the roof deck, and re-shingle. This is often a reason to go for a roof replacement rather than just repairs.
Wrong Roofing Nails
When attaching a roof to a home, roofers need to use nails that are long enough to go through the shingles and adequately penetrate the roof deck. If your roof was a DIY job by the previous homeowner, they may not have used long enough nails. This makes it easier for the wind to catch under the shingles and blow them off. Have a roofer come look at the nails and evaluate whether they are long enough. They may need to add some longer nails to your roof to make it more stable.
If your roof keeps losing shingles every time it gets windy, there's probably a bigger, underlying problem that needs to be addressed.
Contact a local roofing service to learn more about asphalt shingle roof repairs.