Hawaiʻi Hurricane Season: How Residents and Visitors Should Prepare (2026)

Every summer the conversation around here shifts. Somewhere between the Fourth of July and the first week of school, people stop asking about the surf and start asking about the storms. And every year a good number of us realize we never restocked the water we drank during the last scare.

So let’s fix that. This is what hurricane season actually means in Hawaiʻi, what the state wants you to have on hand, what we keep in our own house, and what to do if you happen to be visiting when a storm lines up with the islands. We wrote it for both sides of that: the family that lives here year round, and the family that booked a Kauaʻi trip in August and is now wondering whether that was a mistake.

Related: Understanding Hawaiʻi’s Weather: How to Read the Forecast Like a Local · The Science of When to Visit Hawaiʻi · 10 Things to Know Before Traveling to Hawaiʻi · Oʻahu Surf Report: Today’s Conditions on Every Shore

Quick Reference Links

🌀 Central Pacific Hurricane Center (the official forecast, and the only track you should trust)
🌊 Oʻahu Surf Report: today’s conditions on every shore (updated daily, surf is the first thing a distant storm sends us)
📢 ready.hawaii.gov/alerts (free text alerts, set these up today)
🏠 HI-EMA Get Ready (family plan, go bag, home prep)
🧰 Honolulu DEM 14-Day Kit (printable checklist)
📱 HNL Alert (Oʻahu) · Genasys (Maui) · Everbridge (Hawaiʻi County) · WENS (Kauaʻi)
⛅ National Weather Service Honolulu

Hurricane prep cheat sheet for Hawaiʻi

Everything below is drawn from the Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency, the National Weather Service, and each county’s own emergency agency. If you read nothing else on this page, read this part. Screenshot it, or print it and stick it inside a cabinet door.

Do this once, before the season

• Build a 14 day kit, not a 3 day kit. The mainland standard is three days. Hawaiʻi’s is two weeks, because almost everything we eat arrives by ship and a storm closes the ports. Plan on one gallon (3.8 L) of water per person per day, so 14 gallons (53 L) per person.
• Sign up for your county’s free text alerts. Five minutes, and it is the highest value thing on this list. Numbers and links are below.
• Look up the year your house was built. Statewide, homes built in 2010 or later had to be able to take a Category 3, meaning winds up to 129 mph (208 km/h). Homes built after 1995 needed hardware tying the roof down to the foundation (1993 on Kauaʻi, 1994 in Hawaiʻi County). If yours is older than that, ask a licensed contractor about clips and straps before you need them.
• Read your insurance policy. Hurricane coverage is for wind. Flood is a separate policy and is only required in flood zones. Walk your house with your phone and video every room and every closet now, while it is intact.
• Pack a go bag. Water, high energy food, hand crank or battery radio, flashlight, spare batteries, medications, first aid kit, phone charger and power bank, whistle, multitool, cash, and copies of your important documents in a zip bag.

When a storm has a name and it is pointed our way

• Know the two words. A watch means those conditions are possible, and it comes about 48 hours out. A warning means they are expected, and it comes about 36 hours out. The warning is not when you start; it is when you should already be done.
• Fill your gas tank and pull out cash. When the power goes, so do the pumps and the card readers.
• Refill prescriptions early. Pharmacies close and roads wash out.
• Turn the fridge and freezer to their coldest setting a day ahead, then photograph what is inside so you are not standing there with the door open later.
• Fill your water containers, plus the bathtub for flushing.

The last 24 hours

• Board or shutter windows and glass doors.
• Bring in anything loose. Patio furniture, trash cans, umbrellas, potted plants, the kids’ toys. In 100 mph (161 km/h) wind all of it is a projectile.
• Cut back dead branches, clear the gutters and drains.
• Charge everything: phones, power banks, laptops, tool batteries.
• Test the generator, and run it outdoors only, at least 20 feet (6 m) from the house with the exhaust pointed away from doors, windows, and vents. Never in a garage or a carport, and keep a battery powered carbon monoxide alarm inside.

During the storm

• Get to the lowest floor, into a small interior room away from windows, a closet or a hallway. You want as many walls as possible between you and the outside.
• Keep the radio on and your kit next to you.
• The calm is a trap. If the eye passes over you the wind stops and the sky clears, and the back half of the storm is still coming, from the opposite direction. Do not go outside until officials say it is over.

Where you actually go

For most people here, the safest place is indoors where you already live, particularly if your house is newer and well built. That is the plan for the majority of us. When an emergency does arrive, officials announce which local shelters are opening, usually school gymnasiums and community centers, over the radio, on TV, and through your county alert system. Those are there for you if you have nowhere else to go.

Two situations where staying put is the wrong call, so decide early rather than during a warning: if you live in a flood or tsunami evacuation zone, or if your home is older single wall construction that predates the post Iniki code changes. In either case, arrange somewhere sturdier to be, ideally with family or friends, before a storm is ever named.

Numbers worth putting on the fridge

Life threatening emergency: 911. The statewide outdoor sirens are tested on the first business day of every month. If you hear them at any other time, treat it as real and turn on the radio.

Statewide

• Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency: (808) 733-4300, dod.hawaii.gov/hiema
• Alert signup for every island: HI-EMA Get Alerts
• National Weather Service Honolulu: weather.gov/hfo
• Central Pacific Hurricane Center: nhc.noaa.gov

Oʻahu

• Department of Emergency Management: (808) 723-8960
• HNL Alert: text HNLALERT to 888777
• Open shelters during a storm: p.veoci.com/hnlshelter
• Power outage, Hawaiian Electric: 1-855-304-1212
• Water emergency, Board of Water Supply: (808) 748-5000, then press 1

Maui, Molokaʻi, and Lānaʻi

• Maui Emergency Management Agency: (808) 270-7285
• Alerts: MEMA Alerts signup
• Power outage, Hawaiian Electric: 1-855-304-8181

Hawaiʻi Island

• Hawaiʻi County Civil Defense: (808) 935-0031, after hours (808) 935-3311
• Alerts: text HAWAIIALERTS to 888777
• Power outage, Hawaiian Electric: 1-855-304-9191

Kauaʻi

• Kauaʻi Emergency Management Agency: (808) 241-1800
• Alerts: ALERT Kauaʻi signup
• Power outage, KIUC: (808) 246-4300, then press 5

One last thing, and it is the part people forget: check on your neighbors, especially the kūpuna on your street. A phone tree beats a generator most of the time.

Hurricane season runs June through November, and the peak is right now

Central Pacific hurricane season officially runs from June 1 through November 30. That is the calendar answer. The practical answer is that August and September are the months that matter most. That is historically when the water is warmest, when the atmosphere is most willing to cooperate, and when the storms that have actually hurt Hawaiʻi have shown up.

Most storms that threaten us are not born here. They form off the west coast of Mexico and Central America, then track west toward the islands across thousands of miles of open ocean. That distance is usually our friend. Storms often run into cooler water and stronger wind shear on the way in and fall apart before they arrive. But “usually” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and the ocean has been warmer than it used to be.

NOAA’s outlook for 2026 calls for an above-normal season: a 70 percent chance of above-normal activity, with 5 to 13 tropical cyclones forecast across the central Pacific. A normal season has 4 or 5. The driver is El Niño, and forecasters expect moderate or stronger El Niño conditions to hold through the season. That pattern historically pushes central Pacific activity up sharply. The last strong El Niño, in 2015, produced a record-setting season.

One thing worth understanding: a seasonal outlook is not a landfall forecast. It says nothing about whether a storm will hit your house. It only says how busy the basin is likely to be. More storms mean more chances, and that is the entire reason to prepare in July rather than in the checkout line in September.

Are hurricanes and typhoons the same thing?

Yes. Same storm, different word. Meteorologists call all of them tropical cyclones, and the name only changes based on which patch of ocean the storm is spinning over. In the North Atlantic, the eastern North Pacific, and our own central North Pacific, we call it a hurricane. West of the International Date Line, in the northwest Pacific near Guam, the Philippines, and Japan, that exact same storm is a typhoon. In the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean it is simply called a tropical cyclone.

The wind threshold is identical everywhere. Once maximum sustained winds reach 74 mph (119 km/h), the storm earns the bigger name. Below that it is a tropical storm at 39 to 73 mph (63 to 117 km/h), and a tropical depression under that. So a Category 3 hurricane and a Category 3 typhoon are the same animal doing the same damage; one is just on the other side of a line on the map. The northwest Pacific also uses “super typhoon” for anything at 150 mph (241 km/h) or stronger, which is roughly a high end Category 4 or a Category 5 over here.

That line matters for us more than you would think. Hawaiʻi sits between 140°W and the Date Line, which puts us squarely in hurricane country, and our storms are tracked by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center right here in Honolulu. If a hurricane out here kept tracking west and crossed the Date Line, forecasters on the other side would start calling it a typhoon. Nothing about the storm changes. Only the vocabulary does.

Worth knowing while you are here: the word hurricane traces back to Hurican, a Carib storm god, which came from the Mayan creator god Hurakan, said to have wiped out the world with a great storm and flood. People were naming these things long before anyone could forecast them.

The storm scale, from depression to Category 5

Category numbers get thrown around all season, usually without anyone explaining them. This is the Saffir-Simpson scale, the whole thing in one place, plus what each step actually means for a house in Hawaiʻi.

Two things the scale will not tell you. It measures wind and nothing else, so a Category 1 dumping 15 inches (380 mm) of rain on windward slopes can wreck more here than a stronger storm that stays offshore. And our terrain does its own thing: ridges and valleys funnel wind into pockets that blow far harder than the official number, which is why a storm rated at 80 mph (129 km/h) can tear up one gulch and leave the next one alone. Prepare for the rain and the terrain, not just the category.

What a hurricane has actually done here

We are not going to soften this part, because the honest history is the reason preparation is worth an afternoon.

Hurricane Iniki made landfall on Kauaʻi on September 11, 1992 as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) and gusts well over 150 mph (241 km/h). It damaged more than 14,000 homes on Kauaʻi and destroyed roughly 1,400 of them. Five people in Kauaʻi County died. Seven thousand people were displaced. The entire island lost power, and some homes did not get it back for more than three months. Total damage came to about 3 billion dollars. On Oʻahu, which was never the target, Iniki still brought 80 mph (129 km/h) winds, spun up a tornado in Nānākuli, and tore up the Waiʻanae coast. Two more people died.

Hurricane Iwa hit Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, and Niʻihau in November 1982 as a Category 1 with 90 mph (145 km/h) sustained winds. Over 11,000 buildings were damaged and 500 people were displaced.

Then there are the storms that never made landfall at all. In August 2018, Hurricane Lane came no closer than about 140 miles (225 km) from Hawaiʻi Island, and it still dropped 58 inches (147 cm) of rain on the slopes of Mauna Kea. That is the most rainfall ever recorded in Hawaiʻi and the second-highest storm total ever recorded anywhere in the United States. Flash flooding and landslides damaged 159 buildings on the Big Island. A hundred people had to evacuate.

And in August 2023, Hurricane Dora passed more than 700 miles (1,125 km) to the south. It never came near us. But it tightened the pressure gradient and supercharged the trade winds, and those winds fed the Lahaina fire that killed 102 people.

That last one is the lesson we would underline twice. A storm does not have to hit Hawaiʻi to hurt Hawaiʻi. Distant hurricanes bring dangerous surf and rip currents to shorelines that look perfectly calm on the drive over. They knock down power lines. They start fires. Watching only the forecast cone is how people get caught.

The 14-day kit, and why two weeks instead of three days

Every mainland preparedness guide tells you to keep three days of supplies. Ignore that here. Both the Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency and the Honolulu Department of Emergency Management ask residents to be 14 days ready.

The reason is geography. Almost everything we eat, drink, and burn arrives by ship or plane. If a major storm damages the harbors, the airports, the roads, or the grid, resupply does not roll in overnight from the next county. There is no next county. Estimates put the islands at roughly a week of food on hand at any given moment, and a serious hit to Honolulu Harbor would slow every island at once. Two weeks sounds paranoid until you run the numbers.

Water is the piece people underestimate. The standard is one gallon (3.8 liters) per person per day, which means a family of four needs 56 gallons (212 liters) to cover two weeks. That is a lot of jugs, and it is why we also fill the bathtub and every large pot when a storm is a few days out. Do not forget your pets in that math.

For food, think about what you will actually eat when the power is out and you are cooking on a camp stove or not cooking at all. Canned goods, rice, crackers, peanut butter, shelf-stable milk, the musubi supplies. A manual can opener is the single most forgotten item in Hawaiʻi, and a wall of canned food is decorative without one.

Beyond that: prescription medications with enough refill runway, a real first aid kit, infant formula and diapers if that is your season of life, sanitation supplies including trash bags and bleach, cash in small bills because card readers need power, and copies of your important documents in a waterproof bag. Fill your gas tank early. Gas stations need electricity to pump.

Store it all somewhere you can move fast. HI-EMA suggests a rolling cooler, which is a small idea that pays off if you end up relocating to a relative’s house.

How you will actually get information when the power goes out

Your phone is not a plan. Cell sites have backup batteries measured in hours, and towers go down.

Sign up now for your county’s alert system: HNL Alert on Oʻahu, Genasys for Maui County, Everbridge for Hawaiʻi County, and WENS on Kauaʻi. They are free and they take about two minutes.

Then buy a battery powered radio and keep spare batteries with it. When everything else fails, local radio is still broadcasting, and that is how people found out what was happening after Iniki. A car radio counts, though sitting in the car to listen burns fuel you may want later.

For the forecast itself, go to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service in Honolulu. Not a screenshot someone posted, not a spaghetti model a stranger reshared with a scary caption. Every season we watch people panic over a single model run that no forecaster believes. New this season, the National Hurricane Center is issuing storm surge watches and warnings plus a peak storm surge graphic for the main Hawaiian Islands, which is genuinely useful if you live near the water.

One more thing that trips people up: the eye of a storm is calm. That calm is the middle, not the end. People walk outside during the eye, and then the back half of the storm arrives from the opposite direction. Wait for officials to say it is over.

Short on planning time? Compare Oʻahu tours here and let the guides handle the logistics.

Your house: what the building code says about you

How much you need to worry depends a lot on when your house was built, and most people have never checked.

After Iniki exposed how easily roofs came off, Hawaiʻi changed its building codes. Homes built from 1995 on were required to have a hardware connection running from the roof down to the foundation. On Kauaʻi that applies to homes built in 1993 or later, and in Hawaiʻi County 1994 or later. Then, statewide, homes built in 2010 or later had to be able to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, meaning winds up to 129 mph (208 km/h).

If your place predates those dates, it is worth a conversation with a licensed contractor or your insurance agent. The upgrades that matter most are the connections and the openings. Metal clips and straps tying the roof to the walls and the walls to the foundation create what engineers call a continuous load path, which spreads wind load across the whole structure instead of letting the roof act like a wing. A hip roof, where every side slopes down, handles wind better than a gable end. And because a single broken window can pressurize a house and lift the roof from the inside, impact rated windows, hurricane shutters, or pre-cut plywood panels are not decoration.

Garage doors are the sleeper issue. They are the largest opening in most homes and they buckle first. Bracing kits exist, and you should also know how to open yours manually when the power is out.

The unglamorous stuff matters too. Keep up with caulking and sealing around windows, doors, plumbing, and the roofline, because a small gap plus a hurricane rainband equals water in your walls and mold later. The University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant program publishes a free Homeowner’s Handbook to Prepare for Natural Hazards, and the state DCCA has a Guide to Hurricane Strengthening for single family homes. Both are better than anything we could summarize here.

When a storm is a few days out, the last minute list is short and physical: board the windows, bring in everything that can become a projectile (outdoor furniture, trash cans, the keiki toys, the hanging plants), trim dead branches, clear the gutters and drains, and test the generator before you need it rather than during.

Insurance, the boring part that matters most

Standard homeowners insurance in Hawaiʻi does not cover hurricanes. Hurricane coverage is a separate policy, and every lender here requires it. It mainly covers wind damage, including rain that gets in after wind opens up your roof.

Flood is a different policy again, and it is only required in flood zones. That gap catches people, because storm surge and flash flooding are two of the most destructive things a hurricane does. Being fully covered for wind and not at all for water is a common and expensive surprise.

Condo owners have their own situation. Hurricane deductibles on condo buildings can run as high as 50,000 dollars, and for a few years association premiums went up so steeply that hundreds of buildings ended up underinsured. There is better news lately: competition from the state Hurricane Relief Fund has pushed premiums down significantly, with reported drops of 30 to 70 percent depending on coverage. One Mōʻiliʻili building saw its annual hurricane premium fall from about 103,600 dollars to about 37,500. If your AOAO has not shopped its coverage recently, that is a board meeting worth attending.

Whether you own or rent, do the inventory. Walk through the house with your phone and video everything, open the closets and the cabinets, and store it somewhere that is not only in the house. The NAIC home inventory app is free and does this room by room. Filing a claim from memory after losing a roof is a miserable way to learn this lesson.

Should you visit Hawaiʻi during hurricane season?

Short answer: yes, and we would not tell you otherwise. The odds of your specific week overlapping with a storm that actually affects your island are low. Direct hits are rare. Most seasons pass with nothing more dramatic than a few days of high surf and a rainy afternoon.

The longer answer is that June through November is also when a lot of the value is. Rates soften after the summer peak, the beaches are calmer, and September and October are two of the nicest months here if you do not mind some humidity. We would rather you come with clear eyes than not come at all.

What we would actually do is book with flexibility. Pay attention to the cancellation terms on the hotel and the car, favor bookings you can move, and check whether your airline has a history of issuing waivers. As storms approach, airlines routinely release change waivers that let you fly out early or push your trip, usually with the fee dropped.

Travel insurance: what it covers and what it does not

This is where visitors lose money, so it is worth being precise.

Standard trip cancellation and trip interruption coverage kicks in for specific triggers, not for worry. If your flight is cancelled, the airport closes, a mandatory evacuation is ordered, or your hotel is made uninhabitable, you can recover prepaid costs for flights, rooms, and tours you could not use. What you cannot do is watch the news, decide to stay home, and get reimbursed. Deciding not to travel is not a covered reason.

If you want the freedom to cancel simply because a storm is out there, you need Cancel For Any Reason coverage. CFAR is an add-on, it reimburses a percentage rather than the full amount, and it is usually only available within a short window after your first trip payment, typically 14 to 21 days.

The timing rule that catches the most people: once a storm is named, it is a known event, and you can no longer buy coverage for it. Insurance bought after Fausto or Iniki or anything else gets a name will not cover that storm. If you want hurricane protection, buy it when you book, not when you get nervous.

What to do if a storm comes while you are here

Stay with your hotel. This is the part visitors get wrong most often, usually by trying to drive somewhere. Hotels in Hawaiʻi have hurricane plans, most of the larger concrete buildings in Waikīkī are far more solid than anything you will find on short notice, and staff will move guests to interior corridors and ballrooms away from glass. Wandering out to find a shelter, or getting on the road during a storm, is more dangerous than staying put.

Fill the rental car with gas early, get cash out, refill any prescriptions, and buy a few days of food and water like everyone else. Do not wait for the shelves to empty. Sign up for the county alerts above even for a one week trip, because that is how you will hear about closures.

Public shelters are a last resort, not a first choice. Expect a school cafeteria or gym with no food or bedding provided; you bring your own supplies. Many are pet friendly if animals are leashed or crated, but confirm rather than assume. Officials open and announce shelters only when they are needed, so there is no permanent list to plan around.

The state maintains a Hawaiʻi Visitor Emergency Guide with county alerts and airport information, which is the right bookmark for anyone traveling here between June and November.

Check on your neighbors

Kits help, but what has always gotten this place through storms is people checking on each other.

Kūpuna living alone, neighbors with disabilities or medical equipment that needs power, families without a car, and unsheltered ʻohana are the people most exposed when the grid goes down. County and state officials say this every season, and it is not a formality. Knock on the door. Trade phone numbers before you need them. Figure out now who on your street has a generator and who has a chainsaw, because after the wind stops the work is clearing driveways and sharing ice.

After a storm, be careful about what looks finished. Downed lines should be treated as live. Floodwater carries sewage and debris and hides washed out roadway. Generators belong outside and far from windows, never in a garage. And save the photos before you clean up, because your insurer will want them.

Why we prep anyway

Most hurricane seasons in Hawaiʻi end quietly. That is exactly why preparation slips: nothing happens, so we forget, and then a year like 1992 or 2018 or 2023 comes along and the people who were ready spend the week annoyed while everyone else spends it scared.

Being 14 days ready takes a couple of grocery runs and one afternoon with a contractor if your house is older. Add a phone call to your insurance agent and two minutes signing up for alerts. Do it in July, not in the water aisle in September when the pallets are already gone.

Take care of your ʻohana, keep an eye on your neighbors, and watch the official forecast instead of the loudest post in your feed. Mahalo for reading, and stay safe out there this season.

More from Wanderlustyle

🌦️ Understanding Hawaiʻi’s Weather: How to Read the Forecast Like a Local
🌊 The Science of When to Visit Hawaiʻi: Geography, Ocean Currents and Trade Winds
🧳 Hawaiʻi Packing List: What to Actually Bring (and Skip)
🏝️ Which Hawaiian Island Should You Visit? An Honest Comparison
🌴 10 Things to Know Before Traveling to Hawaiʻi