A lot of homes with gable end roofs noted in my neighborhood. (days, degree)

[explorerman1]

I just recently moved into an apartment in Fort Myers, Florida and have noticed that the majority of houses in especially my neighborhood have gable end roofs. Most of them even have gable ends on not one or two, but at least three sides! There is even a new residential facility under construction in my neighborhood, and originally they were doing well on the roof until they threw in 12 of those bay things or whatever you call them that are attached to the roof and make for extra rooms, and all 12 of them end in an overhanging gable end. A few homes in my neighborhood have hipped roofs, but they are very shallow in slope (as in maybe 15 to 20 degrees in steepness) and have the potential to become like airplane wings in a hurricane, and even some of the gable end roofs are that shallow, and some even more shallow, as in even as little as 5 to 10 degrees from horizontal.

It is of my understanding that gable end roofs are a bad choice for hurricane regions. According to especially an old Hurricane Survival Guide that I have, gable end roofs catch wind like a sail. Which leads to the roof peeling away, the triangular wall blowing in allowing wind and rain to whoosh into the house, wetting everything and even turning the attic and the house into a wind tunnel, or possibly even the whole house getting shifted from it's foundation, especially if it's a wood frame structure house. Hipped roofs are the ideal type of roof, but they are supposed to be at least 35 degrees or steeper on the outside slopes. If the slope is too shallow, especially less than 35 degrees, then the winds blowing over it create uplift on the leeward side, like an airplane wing. In that situation, the leeward side can come loose and possibly even start banging up and down if the winds are gusty. And then when the winds change direction, the whole roof would lift right off. If the roof slopes are 35 degrees or steeper, the wind blowing over it will simply break up into turbulence and create more of a "stalling" phenomenon on the leeward side, basically the same way as a plane would stall if you aim it's nose too high or when a pilot landing a commercial jet raises the spoilers on the wings, resulting in the roof being more held down on the structure by the wind pressure.

[steveklein]

I really don't know about the physics of it all... but building codes in south Florida are pretty tough these days... so I assume if you are seeing new construction go up with them, then it can't be that terrible.