2026 Hurricane Season Forecast: What It Means for South Florida

Hurricane Andrew hit florida during a quiet hurricane season

In 1992, the Atlantic produced just six named storms. By the numbers, it was one of the quietest seasons on record. The first of those storms was Andrew. It came ashore near Homestead on August 24 as a Category 5 with sustained winds around 165 mph, and it became the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history at the time — an estimated $26.5 billion in 1992 dollars, according to the National Park Service’s account of the storm. It destroyed more than 63,000 homes and damaged over 124,000 others.

And part of what made Andrew so catastrophic wasn’t only the wind. It was the houses. Back in 1992, most South Florida homes were built to far weaker standards, and very few had impact-rated windows or tested shutters of any kind. When the storm found an unprotected window or door, it got inside and tore the structure apart from within. Investigators later tied a large share of the destruction to weak construction and a near-total lack of opening protection. Andrew didn’t just hit South Florida, it exposed how unprepared south florida was.

There’s also a issue that lands close to home for 2026. A recent News 6 report, citing the National Hurricane Center, pointed out that three of Florida’s most destructive hurricanes — Andrew, Michael, and Idalia — all formed during El Niño seasons. The same pattern that’s calming this year’s forecast was in place for all three.

The insurance world watches this too. Allianz catastrophe analyst Stefanie Feuerstein notes that most losses come from a few hurricanes hitting populated areas, and points out that a similarly quiet 2012 forecast came right before Hurricane Sandy hammered the Northeast. Quiet seasons and catastrophic landfalls aren’t opposites — and 2025 was calm too, with no hurricane reaching the continental U.S. for the first time in a decade. Two quiet years back to back is exactly the kind of stretch that lulls homeowners into putting protection off. That’s a huge trap.

When Does Hurricane Season Start? Why June Storms Hit South Florida First

The season officially opens June 1 and runs through November 30. June is historically the slow month, and the deep-Atlantic storms usually don’t fire up until late summer.

But early-season storms tend to form closer to home (in the Gulf), the northwestern Caribbean, and the waters just off the Southeast. That proximity is important. A storm that spins up near Florida has a lot less ocean to cross before it’s at your door. The Weather Channel notes that El Niño’s shear hasn’t clamped down this early in the year, which leaves enough warm water and moisture for an early system to get going.

How Impact Windows and Accordion Shutters Reduce Hurricane Damage

Most people picture hurricane damage as a tree crashing through the roof. The bigger threat is quieter and a lot faster: one broken window or door.

The moment a storm breaches your home’s envelope — usually through a failed window, door, or garage door — wind pours inside and has nowhere to go. Pressure builds against the walls and the underside of the roof from the inside, while the storm keeps shoving from the outside. That push-pull is what lifts roofs off and blows walls out. It’s also how wind-driven rain gets in and ruins everything the house was supposed to shelter. Stop the breach, and you stop most of the chain reaction.

That’s the whole job of hurricane protection — and our two main products do it in different ways.

A lot of homeowners don’t realize you don’t have to pick one. The with Assured Storm Protection, we carry both Impact Windows and Accordion Shutters (we’re one of the few hurricane protection companies that offer both.) impact windows on the front and other high-visibility openings, accordion shutters on the sides and back. It’s a mix that can cut the price of a full impact-window job by up to half. We break that trade-off down in our guide to impact windows vs. accordion shutters for 2026.

What matters for damage is simple: every opening on the home is covered. One unguarded window can undo the work of all the others.

How Hurricane Andrew Reshaped South Florida’s Impact Window Codes

Andrew didn’t just change floridian’s perspectives on hurricane season. It rewrote how Florida builds.

In the years after the storm, the state overhauled its building codes, and Miami-Dade and Broward became the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone — the HVHZ — the strictest wind-borne debris standard in the country. It’s the reason the impact windows and accordion shutters we install today carry Miami-Dade approval and have to pass large-missile impact tests: the ones that fire a 2×4 at the product at storm speed to see if it holds.

In other words, the protection available for your home during the 2026 hurricane season exists because of what one storm did in a year nobody expected much from.

Why Hurricane Protection Matters More Than the 2026 Hurricane Season Forecast

A seasonal forecast changes every few months. NOAA already plans to update its 2026 hurricane season forecast numbers in early August, before the historical peak. Your home’s protection works the same on a quiet day as it does on the day a storm is bearing down on the coast.

That’s the real case for not pinning your decision on a forecast. Hurricane protection guards your family and your belongings — but it earns its keep the other 360 days a year too:

One catch trips a lot of people up, and we cover it in our piece on how impact windows and doors affect your insurance: the discount usually requires every opening to be protected, so a single bare window can wipe out the credit. If you’re still weighing whether any of this is worth it, our overview of why hurricane protection matters in South Florida lays out the case.

Here’s where we come in. Assured Storm Protection has been South Florida’s one-stop hurricane protection shop since 1980, with more than 200,000 installations across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach. We carry the top five impact window brands, and we build three of our own accordion shutter lines in house. That range is what lets us combine impact windows on your most visible openings with cost-effective accordion shutters everywhere else, a mix that can cut the price of a full impact-window job by up to half, and because of our 3+ decade relationships with our suppliers, we are often far more competitive on price when compared to leading competitors.

Because we run our own crews and handle the permitting, the work moves fast. For projects under $50,000, 97% are finished in two days or less.