Owners who only come in summer know the maestral, the pleasant afternoon breeze off the sea. Some have met the jugo, the humid southerly that brings the rain and the swell and everybody’s bad mood.
Very few have been in the house during a bura, because the bura is a winter wind. It falls off the Velebit and the coastal mountains in cold, dry, violent gusts, and on the exposed stretches of this coast (the Velebit channel, the Kvarner islands, the approaches to Šibenik), it is strong enough that bridges are closed to traffic and ferries stop running.
It is also the single most reliable source of winter damage we deal with, and it is almost entirely predictable in what it goes for.
Croatia’s national meteorological and hydrological service, DHMZ, issues wind warnings for each stretch of the coast and publishes them on meteo.hr. If you own here and read nothing else about the weather, that is the page worth knowing, the warning levels are the same ones the ferry operators and the road authority act on.
Why the bura damages what it damages
The bura is not a steady wind. It is gusts: sudden, hard, from a consistent direction, hour after hour for two or three days.
That pattern matters. A steady wind pushes; a gusting wind works things loose. Anything on your building that is fastened but slightly tired (a shutter hinge, a ridge tile, a gutter bracket, a loose flashing) is subjected to several thousand sharp pulls in a row from the same angle.
Which is why bura damage is so repetitive. It is never a surprise which part of the house failed. It is the part that was already the weakest, and it usually was already visible.
The list, in the order things actually fail
Shutters. Overwhelmingly the most common. A shutter left unlatched or latched to a tired catch will beat itself and the wall to pieces overnight, and it takes the frame with it. Every shutter either properly closed and secured, or properly fixed open, never resting.
Roof tiles at ridges and edges. The middle of a roof is rarely the problem. Ridges, verges, the edge courses and anything around a chimney are where the wind gets underneath.
Gutters and downpipes. Brackets loosen, and a gutter that comes away in January does not simply fall off. It hangs, fills, and directs a winter’s water down the wall or into the roof structure. The staining that appears indoors months later is often this.
Terrace furniture and anything portable. A parasol base is not a fixing. Sun loungers, tables, planters, barbecues and unpinned awnings all travel, and they do damage on the way, usually to glass, sometimes to a neighbour’s car.
Awnings. An awning left extended, or one whose wind sensor was disconnected because it kept retracting the thing, is a total loss and frequently takes its wall fixings with it.
Aerials, satellite dishes, solar fittings. Old fixings and modern wind loads.
Trees. Not usually the trunk but the branch that was already dead and that nobody looked up at.
Two things that are specific to the bura
It is dry. Unlike the jugo, the bura does not bring rain with it. Owners take this as good news, and it usually is, but it has one consequence worth knowing: bura damage frequently produces no water ingress at the time. The tile comes off in January, the gap sits there doing nothing visible, and the damage shows up when the first serious rain arrives in a different month entirely. By then nobody connects the two.
It comes with salt. On exposed coastal stretches the bura lifts sea spray and drives it inland. Metal fittings, hinges, locks, rails and anything electrical outdoors corrode faster on a bura-facing elevation than they have any right to. If one side of your house always looks tired, that will be the reason.
What to do before the season, and when
The work is small and the timing is the whole point: it belongs in October and November, before the first serious bura and while there are still tradespeople available. By January you are looking for an emergency call-out on a coast where the wind has just given several hundred other people the same idea.
- Every shutter closed and latched, or fixed open. Check the catches, not just the shutters.
- Terrace cleared. Furniture inside, or stacked and secured, not weighted.
- Awnings retracted; wind sensor working, not bypassed.
- Gutters cleared of pine needles and leaves, brackets checked by hand for movement.
- Roof looked at from ground level with binoculars, or from a ladder: ridge, verges, around the chimney.
- Dead branches over the house, the terrace, the parking space and the neighbour’s boundary.
- Anything on the roof (aerial, dish, solar), its fixings tested.
Most of this overlaps with winterising the house, and sensibly gets done on the same visit.
And after it blows
Somebody has to look. That is the entire point, and it is where the owners we take on have usually had their bad experience.
Bura damage that is found within days is a tile and an afternoon. The same damage found at Easter is a wet roof structure, a stained ceiling and a plasterer. If it is severe enough to be an insurance matter, the photographs taken before anything is touched are the claim, the sequence is set out in storm damage and the insurance claim.
How we handle it
We watch the forecast for the areas we cover and go out after a serious blow rather than waiting for the next scheduled visit. That is what keyholding and emergencies is for.
Before the season, the checklist above is part of the autumn round, and what we find goes into the report with photographs and a date, so a shutter catch that was noted as tired in October is not a matter of anybody’s memory in February.
On the islands, be aware of the honest limitation: when the bura is at its worst the ferries do not run. Same-day attendance is a mainland commitment. On an island in a serious bura, nobody is coming until the wind drops, including us.
This article describes typical wind damage on the Croatian coast and is general guidance, not a structural or insurance assessment. What is right for your building depends on its construction, exposure and condition.