Local Contractors Report 6-Month Backlog Following Tuesday Wind Event

WAUKESHA — Five days after a severe thunderstorm packing gusts up to 65 mph and quarter-sized hail swept through the city, local exterior contractors say they are booking repair appointments as far out as February 2027, with several offices reporting call volume they described as unlike anything in recent memory.

Jerry Malmstrom, owner of Malmstrom's Roofing & Exterior on Grand Avenue, said his phone began ringing before 7 a.m. Wednesday and has not meaningfully stopped since. He counted 43 new customers requesting quotes in the first 48 hours after the storm, a pace his three-person office has never sustained for more than a single afternoon.

"We usually get a bump after a bad storm. This wasn't a bump. This was the phone ringing while I was still on hold with the shingle supplier," Malmstrom said, flipping through a paper appointment book that had, by Friday, run out of blank lines through the end of the calendar year.

"I told a woman on Struck Street her estimate visit was scheduled for January 14th and she just went quiet. I don't think she was upset. I think she was doing math."

— Jerry Malmstrom, Malmstrom's Roofing & Exterior

The $800 Line Item

With appointment slots scarce, some contractors have begun offering expedited scheduling at a premium. Barb Chenoweth, 54, of Backslide Way, said she was offered what her contractor's invoice described as a "priority access" service tier, an $800 charge above the base cost of her fence repair that would move her inspection from November to mid-September.

"I asked if that included anything extra, like a better fence. He said no, it just means somebody looks at my fence sooner," Chenoweth said. She said she declined the upgrade and is currently scheduled for a November 3 estimate, which she has marked on her kitchen calendar in red pen next to a note reading "TARP STATUS: STILL UP."

Malmstrom confirmed his office has offered similar expedited tiers to roughly a dozen customers so far, calling the practice "not something we invented, just something we've never had enough demand to actually use before this week."

Adjusters Forming Lines

The bottleneck is not limited to labor. Several homeowners reported insurance adjusters queuing outside contractor offices to compare damage assessments before repair work can be authorized. Malmstrom said he counted six adjusters waiting in the Grand Avenue parking lot Thursday morning, three of them from different carriers assigned to the same block.

"At one point two adjusters were looking at the same downed gutter from opposite sides of a ladder. Neither one wanted to be the first to leave," Malmstrom said.

Backslide Way Damage Survey

On Backslide Way, 70-year-old Ned England spent Wednesday and Thursday afternoons surveying storm damage from his front lawn chair, using the same handheld radar gun he typically deploys against speeding hospital traffic to instead clock the speed of tree limbs sliding off his neighbors' roofs. He reported no readings above 4 mph, which he called "disappointing, but understandable given the circumstances."

England said he has not filed a formal insurance claim himself, noting that his lower duplex unit sustained only a single dislodged gutter screen, but that he intends to keep documenting the block's recovery for his YouTube channel, Nedventuresout, until "the last tarp comes down."

No End Date Yet

Malmstrom said he does not expect his backlog to shorten meaningfully before spring, citing both the volume of new requests and a regional shortage of the specific asphalt shingle color, Weathered Wood, that matches roughly 70 percent of the roofs on his current job list. He said he has stopped promising callers a specific month and has switched to telling them "before the next bad one," a phrase he said has become his de facto scheduling policy.

Chenoweth said she has made peace with her November appointment, though she has asked a neighbor to keep an eye on her tarp "in case the raccoons figure out the corner again before then."