Guides · Preparedness

Hurricane season, week by week: a preparedness checklist that is not overwhelming

8 min read · Updated September 2026

Hurricane preparation fails when it is treated as one enormous task attempted two days before landfall, standing in a store with empty shelves. Broken into stages, almost all of it is cheap and boring.

The other thing worth fixing early: the category number describes wind, not water. Most hurricane deaths in the United States come from water, meaning storm surge and inland freshwater flooding. Plan for water first.

The short version

Know your evacuation zone letter before there is a storm on the map.
The category is a wind scale; water causes most deaths.
Generators go outside, far from windows, every time.

At the start of the season

Find out whether your address is in a storm surge evacuation zone and write the zone letter on the fridge. Zones are set by elevation and surge modeling, not by how far you feel from the coast.
Photograph every room, including inside closets and cabinets, and email the photos to yourself. This is your insurance claim.
Check that your insurance actually covers flood. Standard homeowner policies do not, and new flood policies typically have a thirty-day waiting period.
Trim trees, clear gutters, and note which windows you would board.

Seventy-two hours out

Fill prescriptions to a two-week supply.
Get cash in small bills. Card networks fail when power and connectivity do.
Fill the car and fill spare gas cans for a generator. Fuel disappears earliest.
Freeze water in bottles and jugs. They keep the freezer cold longer and become drinking water later.
Decide now whether you are leaving. If you are, book somewhere inland and tell two people your route.

Thirty-six hours out

Board or shutter windows. Tape does nothing except make bigger shards.
Bring in everything on the porch and in the yard: furniture, plants, trash bins, the grill.
Fill the bathtub for flushing water.
Charge every battery bank, laptop, and power tool battery in the house.
Turn the refrigerator to its coldest setting and stop opening it.

The surge question

Storm surge is the wall of ocean water pushed ashore by the storm. Six feet of moving salt water will float a car and collapse the ground floor of most houses. Wind you can hide from behind interior walls; surge you cannot, because the water simply arrives and keeps rising.

This is why evacuation orders are written by zone and not by category. If your zone is called, leaving is about tens of miles, not hundreds. Getting inland and to higher ground is usually a short drive, and starting early is what makes it a short drive.

During and after

The eye is not the end. Winds return from the opposite direction, often stronger, and they hit structures already weakened.

Afterward: no generators indoors, in garages, or near windows, ever. Carbon monoxide kills people every single season, usually days after the storm has passed. Assume all floodwater is contaminated and electrified. Do not drive to sightsee: you block the crews restoring the power you are waiting on.