Late August through mid-September is the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, and the last calm window for a Palm Beach County homeowner to prepare. Once a storm has a name and a forecast cone brushing South Florida, generator technicians book solid, propane routes get suspended, and hardware aisles from Jupiter to Lake Worth empty out in an afternoon.
This checklist is ordered by what matters most, based on what actually fails here: salt air, CBS block construction, 1970s and 1980s housing stock, and a grid run by FPL. Start at the top and work down.
Exercise the generator before the storm does
A standby generator that passed its weekly exercise cycle is not automatically storm ready. Most exercise runs spin the engine without transferring the house load, so a unit can pass every self-test all summer while the transfer switch hides a fault you only discover in a real outage.
- Run a full transfer test. Simulate an outage by opening the main breaker, confirm the automatic transfer switch picks up the house, then restore power and confirm a clean transfer back. If anything hesitates or drops circuits, schedule service now, not in October.
- Read the controller. Check the exercise log and clear any fault codes. A unit that has been skipping cycles in the summer heat is warning you. Look at the battery terminals and enclosure seams too: salt air corrodes both faster than the maintenance schedule assumes.
- Solve fuel logistics this week. Most standby units here run on propane because natural gas service is limited to a few corridors. Propane companies suspend deliveries as a storm approaches and will not send trucks into a watch or warning area. Top the tank off now and confirm your delivery account is current.
No generator yet? Be realistic about the calendar. A permanent unit involves Palm Beach County or municipal permitting, a pad and anchoring rated for wind load, gas piping, and inspection: a project you start between storms, not ahead of one on the map. Our standby generator installation page explains the process, and booking now covers the back half of this season and every one after.
Unplug by category, not by panic
When a watch is issued, walk the house and disconnect anything with a control board you can live without: televisions, computers and network gear, the garage door opener, mini-split heads, the induction cooktop. Off at the switch is not disconnected. Surges ride in on the service conductors during grid instability, and the worst often arrive during restoration, not the storm itself.
Leave the refrigerator and freezer running, and set them colder ahead of landfall so the thermal mass buys you time. If you evacuate from a surge zone and water could reach the house, shut off the main breaker on your way out. Energized wiring under floodwater turns a wet house into a burned one.
Build surge protection in layers
A plug-in power strip is the last layer of a surge strategy, not the strategy. The National Electrical Code covers surge protective devices in Article 242, where they moved from Article 285 in the 2020 edition, and NEC 230.67 now requires a Type 1 or Type 2 SPD on new and replaced dwelling services. The change reflects how damage happens: the big transient arrives on the service conductors, and only a device at the service entrance can clamp it before it reaches every branch circuit.
The working setup here is two layers. A whole-house surge protection device at the panel absorbs the large events: nearby lightning, which South Florida sees in abundance, and the switching transients that come as FPL re-energizes the grid section by section after a storm. Point-of-use protectors at the electronics then catch the smaller let-through voltage. Either layer alone leaves a gap.
Walk outside and look up: mast, weatherhead, meter can
This is the ownership split homeowners learn at the worst possible time. FPL owns the service drop, meaning the overhead conductors from the pole, and the meter itself. You own what the drop attaches to: the weatherhead, the mast, the service entrance cable, and the meter can. If wind peels the mast off the house, FPL will not rebuild it. The utility waits for a licensed electrician to repair the mast and meter can and for the work to pass inspection before reconnecting service. After a major storm, that repair queue gets long.
Inspect it now, from the ground. Near the coast, salt air eats galvanized meter cans from the bottom seam up, and rust streaks below the can are an early warning. Look for a mast that has pulled away from the wall, a cracked or missing weatherhead cap, service cable insulation that has alligatored in the sun, and a drip loop that no longer loops. On CBS block homes, check the fasteners: masonry anchors corrode invisibly inside the block, and the mast looks fine until the first gust.
GFCI protection for pump-out and cleanup
The most dangerous electrical work many homeowners ever do is post-storm cleanup: utility pumps in flooded garages, wet vacs on soaked slabs, extension cords across standing water. All of it must run on GFCI protection.
Press the TEST button on every outdoor, garage, and exterior-wall receptacle this week. Coastal humidity shortens GFCI life, and a dead one fails silently: power still flows but protection does not. If TEST does not kill the receptacle, replace it. Where older receptacles have no GFCI protection at all, common in unrenovated 1970s and 1980s homes, use a portable inline GFCI cord between receptacle and pump. Never lift a ground pin with a two-prong adapter to make a cord fit.
The first 48 hours after the storm
Never backfeed, under any circumstances
Backfeeding is plugging a portable generator into a dryer outlet or wall receptacle with a double-male cord to feed the panel. Doing so energizes the utility side of your service and can electrocute the line crews restoring your neighborhood. When grid power returns, it can also destroy the generator and start a fire. The only safe way to power house circuits from a portable unit is a transfer switch or interlock kit at the panel. Without one, run appliances directly from the generator on heavy-gauge outdoor cords, with the generator outside and well away from windows, doors, and soffit vents. Carbon monoxide after a hurricane is quiet, fast, and preventable.
A panel that got wet is not your call
If surge or floodwater reached your panel, meter can, or receptacles, do not turn the main back on to see what happens. Submerged breakers corrode internally and can fail to trip when you need them most, and the industry guidance for flooded breakers is replacement, not drying out. Have it inspected before it is re-energized.
That matters doubly in our housing stock. Plenty of Palm Beach County homes from the late 1960s and early 1970s still carry aluminum branch circuit wiring, and connections already prone to loosening tolerate water intrusion badly. Many panels of that vintage are originals with no replacement parts on the market. If yours is one of them, a post-storm inspection is often the moment to schedule an electrical panel upgrade instead of reinvesting in obsolete gear.
If the storm gets there first
Preparation has a deadline, and hurricanes do not publish theirs. If a named storm is already on the map, prioritize the transfer test, the unplug list, and the meter can walk, then leave the rest to professionals. Thomas Edison Electric is a licensed Florida electrical contractor (License EC13015487) based in Jupiter, and we answer 24 hours a day. For storm damage, a dead panel, or a generator that will not transfer, call our 24/7 emergency electrician line at (561) 462-2800. We would rather see you in August than in the dark.