Everybody cleans their gutters in November because that is what the advice says. In San Antonio that advice was written for a different climate, and following it puts you roughly six months out of step.
Live oaks drop in spring
The dominant tree across much of north San Antonio is the live oak, and live oaks are not deciduous in the way a maple is. They hold their leaves through winter and shed them in late spring as the new growth pushes through, typically March into April.
They also drop catkins, and catkins are worse than leaves. They are stringy, they mat together, and they pack into a downspout elbow far more tightly than a leaf ever will. If your gutters block solid once a year, that is usually what did it.
The rain does not arrive when you expect either
San Antonio rainfall is bimodal. The two wettest stretches are late spring, roughly May, and early autumn, roughly October. Between them sits a hot dry summer, and either side sits a relatively dry winter.
Put those together and the timing writes itself. You want the gutters clear before the May rain and clear again before the October rain, which means cleaning in April and again in September. A November clean is tidying up after both events have already passed.
Why a blocked gutter costs more here than elsewhere
In a wetter climate a blocked gutter overflows regularly and you notice. Here it can sit blocked through a dry summer doing nothing at all, then meet a heavy autumn storm and dump the entire roof plane at one point next to the foundation.
That is the connection to the drywall cracks problem. Water concentrated at one corner of a slab through a wet spell, on soil that is already moving seasonally, is a foundation issue arriving disguised as a gutter issue.
It also drives paint failure. Water running down a wall behind a blocked gutter, on a south or west elevation that is already taking hard UV, is the fastest way to lose an exterior paint job early.
What a proper clean includes
Clearing by hand rather than blowing debris into the downspout. Flushing the run through to confirm it actually drains. Checking the fall, because gutters sag over time and a run that no longer falls toward the outlet will hold standing water regardless of how clean it is. And checking that the downspout discharges away from the slab rather than beside it.
Tree cover varies enormously across the metro. Heavy canopy in Stone Oak, Hollywood Park and Shavano Park means twice a year is the floor, not the target. Boerne and the Hill Country edge get cedar debris on top of the oak, which is finer and packs tighter still.
Gutter cleaning takes two to three hours on a typical single storey house. It is one of the few pieces of maintenance where the cost of skipping it is wildly out of proportion to the cost of doing it.
Need this doing rather than reading about it?
Uncle Sam Handyman LLC covers a 35 mile radius at one rate, with a free written estimate before any work starts.