Peak of hurricane season

Is anything headed for Pensacola?

Live tropical activity from the National Hurricane Center and current alerts from the National Weather Service. We report what they publish — we don’t forecast.

If a storm is actually coming, official orders from Escambia County come first. This page is a fast read, not a substitute for them.

In the Atlantic right now

Checking the Hurricane Center…

Weather alerts for Pensacola

Checking the National Weather Service…

What a storm actually means here

Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, but Pensacola’s real window is narrower. Late August through early October is when the Gulf is warmest and most of the serious local history happened.

The thing that damages Pensacola is usually water, not wind. Storm surge pushes into the bay and the sound, and low-lying downtown streets and the bayous flood well before anything dramatic happens to the roof. Pensacola Beach is a barrier island — it gets told to leave first, and it gets told to leave early.

Plan around the bridges. Getting off the beach depends on spans that close once winds get high enough, and that call comes before landfall, not during it. If an evacuation is announced, the useful window is the day before, not the morning of.

Everything sells out in a predictable order: bottled water, then gas, then plywood and generators, then ice. If a named storm enters the Gulf and you wait for the cone to include us, you are already behind the crowd.

Before the season, not during it

Our hurricane prep guide covers the supply list, documents, and the timeline that actually works locally.

Pensacola hurricane prep guide →

Go straight to the source

When a storm is close, these are the pages that matter. Evacuation orders and shelter openings come from the county, not from us.

Storm data from the NOAA National Hurricane Center. Alerts from the NOAA National Weather Service. We publish what they report and add local context — we do not issue forecasts, watches, warnings, or evacuation orders.