The electrical checklist to run before hurricane season

Published 2026-05-19 · 9 min read

Before the season: eight checks

Look at the mast and meter can. Rust, a leaning mast or a gap where the weatherhead meets the mast are all things that become expensive during a storm and cheap to fix in May.

Check outdoor disconnects and covers. AC disconnects, pool equipment and well pumps live outside. Cracked covers and missing screws let water into places it should not go.

Test every GFCI. Press test, confirm it trips, press reset. A GFCI that does not trip on test is not protecting anything.

Confirm surge protection. Whole-house surge protection at the panel plus point-of-use protectors on electronics is the standard arrangement. Surge devices wear out absorbing hits; check the status light.

Exercise the generator. If you have a standby unit, watch it run a full cycle. Check oil, filters and battery. Most generator failures in an outage are batteries that died months earlier.

Know where your main breaker is. Everyone in the house should be able to find and operate it in the dark.

Photograph your panel with the door open. Useful for insurance and useful for any electrician you call during a chaotic week.

Trim vegetation near the service drop. Branches on the line are a common cause of damage that is entirely on your side of the fence.

During an outage

Switch off major appliances and your AC at the breaker. When power returns it often comes back unstable, and having every large load restart simultaneously is what kills compressors and boards.

Never run a portable generator in a garage, breezeway or anywhere with an open door to the house. Carbon monoxide is the leading cause of death associated with generators after storms.

Never backfeed a portable generator into a dryer outlet. It energises the utility line outside your house and can kill a lineman. If you want to power circuits from a portable unit, you need an interlock kit or a manual transfer switch fitted properly.

After the storm

Assume any wire on the ground is live. Assume standing water near a service is energised.

If water reached the panel, an outdoor disconnect or any outlet, do not re-energise those circuits. Submerged breakers and devices are replaced, not dried out. Their internals corrode and they fail unpredictably afterwards.

If your service mast or meter can was damaged, that repair usually has to happen before the utility will reconnect you. Getting an electrician on it early in the queue matters enormously in the week after a major storm.

Watch for delayed symptoms: outlets that feel warm, lights that flicker, breakers that start tripping. Surge damage often shows up days later.

Is a standby generator worth it in Florida?

It depends on how much a multi-day outage actually costs you. If someone in the house relies on powered medical equipment, or you work from home, or you have a well pump and no water without power, the calculation is straightforward.

The size question comes down to whether you want the whole house or the essentials. In Florida the deciding load is nearly always the air conditioning, because a house without AC in August becomes uninhabitable faster than most people expect.