NHC director has urgent message as hurricane seasons starts

USA TODAY spoke with National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan about what you should do to prepare for hurricane season, which starts June 1.

NOAA predicts at least three hurricanes this season

NOAA predicts the three major hurricanes in the 2025 hurricane season.

No one could have foreseen how traumatic Hurricane Helene would be for so many people in so many states, but it underscores precisely why National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan stresses individual preparation for hurricane season, which begins June 1.

The biggest thing people need to know is their own risk – from storm surge, wind, heavy rainfall, flooding, tornadoes and rip currents – regardless of how far they live from where a tropical storm or hurricane makes landfall, Brennan says. Helene and its aftermath, which killed 248 and caused almost $80 billion in damage, clearly demonstrated how destruction can occur miles inland or far from landfall.

“Getting ready for hurricane season is all about knowing that risk and starting the hurricane season ready for what that risk might be and how it might present itself to you,” Brennan said in a chat with USA TODAY about what people need to know and do as the season begins.

If he could speak with each one of the more than 200 million people who face hurricane risks in the United States, he would remind them to stay focused on:

Here are eight things Brennan wants you to remember:

Know whether you live in a storm surge zone, then plan ahead

If you live in a storm surge zone, evacuation must be the basis of your hurricane preparedness plan, Brennan said. Consult your local government’s website to find out if you live in an evacuation zone.

It’s important to understand you don’t have to drive hundreds of miles to escape the danger of rapidly rising seawater. Most of the time, you can drive only tens of miles to get out of the storm surge evacuation zone, he said. “It makes evacuation a lot more manageable for people if you don’t feel like you’re going to have to get in the car and drive hours and hours to go someplace you’ve never been before to be safe.”

In advance, ask friends and relatives who live nearby but away from the surge threat, if you could stay with them. The other option is to plan to “get to a safe hotel that gets you away from the storm surge threat, where you can ride out the storm and then deal with the aftermath.”

Start planning now what you would do for your pets, elderly relatives and other folks that might have medical devices, medical conditions or other special needs.

Understand your flood risk

Flooding has almost nothing to do with how strong a storm is from a wind perspective, Brennan said. “It doesn’t take a major hurricane, or even a hurricane, to cause life-threatening rainfall or flooding where you live. It can flood anywhere it can rain.

“It doesn’t even have to rain where you are,” he said. It can just rain hard somewhere else upstream, and if you’re on a waterway, that water could rise and flood you out of your home.

“Freshwater flooding from rainfall has killed more people in tropical storms or hurricanes over the last nine or 10 years in the United States than any other hazard,” he said. “Helene is an unfortunate example of that.” Of 175 people who died as a direct result of Helene’s winds and rain, 95 lost their lives because of freshwater flooding, he said.

If you live in a flood-prone area, even inland along a creek or a stream, have an evacuation plan for you and your family if you are threatened.

Have flood insurance. Remember that homeowners insurance doesn’t usually cover flood damage.

Don’t judge one storm by any previous storm

If you think you’ve seen the worst where you live from flooding or wind, it is “almost positively not the worst,” Brennan said. “It’s likely that the events you’ve seen are only a small piece of what could actually happen. Don’t base your response or decision to evacuate based what happened during the last storm.

“Take each storm on its own and try not to compare,” he said. You could have a very similar storm, on a similar track, but during a different time of year, or different conditions, and it could make a huge difference in what happens where you live.

“There were a lot of people that died in Hurricane Katrina along the Mississippi coast because they survived Camille and they thought nothing could ever be worse,” but Katrina was worse and people didn’t leave, he said. “You don’t want to become a victim to a past storm by not preparing and taking action when another storm threatens you.”

Don’t delay your preparation

“The most powerful hurricanes that have hit the United States have all formed and made landfall within three or four days,” Brennan said. “Even Helene last year went from not even a tropical depression to making landfall within three or four days after it rapidly intensified.”

Have that plan in place for yourself and your family now, he said. “You could have a storm really develop and threaten you within just a couple of days, and that’s not the time to develop your hurricane plan. That’s when you want to put (the plan) into practice.”

How do hurricanes form? An inside look at the birth and power of ferocious storms

Don’t focus on seasonal outlooks

“If you’re in a hurricane-prone area, you have to be ready every year, regardless of whether we’re expecting an average season, below average, above average. That risk is there for everyone every year,” he said. “We had three hurricane landfalls in Florida last year, five along the Gulf Coast. We’ve had 25 hurricane landfalls in the United States since 2017.”

Pay attention to the hazards − not the category

“We have lots of products to tell people what their risk is from wind, storm surge and from heavy rainfall flooding,” Brennan said. “The mix of those hazards is going to vary from storm to storm and from location to location within the same storm. You really have to drill down and find that information.”

A slow-moving tropical storm can cause deadly flooding even without ever becoming a hurricane, and a fast-moving storm like Helene can carry higher winds much farther inland.

“A storm making landfall along the Gulf Coast can cause dangerous flooding in the Mid-Atlantic states, like we saw with Ida back in 2021,” he said. Ida made landfall in Louisiana, but most of the fatalities were up in New York and New Jersey from freshwater flooding days later and hundreds of miles away from landfall.

Find your trusted sources of information

“Make sure you know where to find authoritative information in terms of evacuations and other safety information,” Brennan said. “Make those decisions now, ahead of the storm.” Find your trusted media, your local National Weather Service office, your state and local government officials, and follow them on social media.

Don’t forget to plan for after the storm

When deciding whether to evacuate, consider what life could be like after the storm. Does anyone in your home rely on electricity for medical devices or to keep medicine refrigerated? Do you have a generator and know how to use it safely?

Over the past nine or 10 years, “we’ve lost almost as many people in these indirect deaths that largely occur after a storm as we have to the direct storm itself,” he said. Many of those are due to an unsafe environment, including the loss of electricity. Medical devices fail. Heat causes fatalities. First responders often can’t reach those having medical emergencies.

One of the biggest causes of death after storms are vehicle accidents, he said. “When you’ve been asked to leave, it’s to keep you safe from the storm surge or other effects of the storm. It’s also to keep you safe after the storm.”

Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, writes about hurricanes, violent weather and other environmental issues. Reach her at [email protected] or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.