The Atlantic hurricane season opens on June 1, and for short-term rental hosts in coastal and storm-prone regions, the four weeks before that date are usually the only ones in which preparation is cheap, calm, and unrushed. Once a named system is in the cone, decisions about evacuations, refunds, and on-site work move from planning to crisis management, and the hosts who fare best are typically the ones who decided how they would handle the season before the season started.
The 2026 forecasts so far point to a slightly quieter year than the last two, but "quieter" is a statistical statement about the whole basin and tells an individual host very little about the property they actually own. A single Category 3 landfall on a coastline crowded with rentals can be more financially consequential than an active season that brushes past offshore. The work of getting ready is mostly the same in either case.
What Forecasters Are Saying About 2026
Colorado State University's April outlook calls for 13 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 major (Category 3 or higher) hurricanes, with an Accumulated Cyclone Energy index of 90 — slightly below the long-term average. The April forecast from Tropical Storm Risk is a touch lower still, at 12 named storms, 5 hurricanes, and 1 major hurricane. Both teams cite an emerging strong El Niño as the dominant factor, with CSU projecting that wind shear across the tropical Atlantic will be the second highest since 1981, behind only 2015. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is expected to release its own seasonal outlook in late May.
A below-normal forecast is useful context but not an operational plan. Of the costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, several occurred in seasons that were average or below average overall. Hosts in Florida, the Gulf Coast, the Carolinas, the mid-Atlantic, the Northeast, the Caribbean, and Hawaii (whose Eastern Pacific season opened May 15) should plan as if a major storm is possible, because in any single season it always is.
The Policy Layer: How Platforms Treat Hurricanes Differently
One of the most common surprises for hosts in the middle of a storm event is discovering that the platform they list on does not handle hurricane cancellations the way they assumed. The two largest U.S. platforms have meaningfully different rules.
Airbnb's policy — recently rebranded from "Extenuating Circumstances" to the Major Disruptive Events Policy — explicitly carves out weather and natural conditions that are "common enough to be foreseeable in a given location." Hurricanes during hurricane season in places like Florida, the Gulf Coast, or the Caribbean are treated as foreseeable and are not automatically covered. The policy activates only when a covered event — typically a government-issued mandatory evacuation, travel restriction, or large-scale infrastructure failure — independently prevents completion of the reservation. In practice, that means a tropical storm warning alone is not usually enough to trigger guest refunds at Airbnb's expense.
Vrbo's Extenuating Circumstances Policy is more automatic and more generous to guests. It activates for hurricanes classified as Category 3 or above, beginning 24 hours before expected landfall and continuing for 24 hours after, in the affected area. When activated, Vrbo refunds guests in full regardless of the host's stated cancellation policy, and credit card processing fees on those refunds typically come out of the host's payout. Vrbo waives host penalties — the cancellation rate metrics that affect listing performance — for stays inside the activation window.
The two policies create a structural asymmetry that matters most for hosts who list on both platforms: a guest with a Cat 3 storm on the way may automatically get a refund through Vrbo while a guest in the same property with the same storm may not, through Airbnb. Standardizing communications and refund offers across both channels usually requires the host to be more generous than the stricter policy on their own. That asymmetry sits on top of the wider fee stack between OTAs and direct channels, which is worth mapping before storm season, not during it.
For hosts taking direct bookings, the policy is whatever the rental agreement says it is. There is no platform fallback, which is both the appeal and the responsibility. A clearly written hurricane clause — defining what triggers a refund (a named storm watch, a mandatory evacuation, a Saffir-Simpson threshold), what portion is refunded, and whether credits are offered in lieu of cash — prevents the worst kind of disputes, which are the ones in which neither party agreed in writing on what was supposed to happen.
Before the Season: The Quiet-Month Checklist
The work that pays off in September is almost always done in May. A practical pre-season pass includes:
A property walk focused specifically on storm vulnerabilities. That means roof condition, soffits and fascia, gutter clearance, tree limbs near the structure or power lines, fence integrity, loose outdoor furniture, grills, umbrellas, planters, and pool equipment. Anything that becomes a projectile in 90 mph winds should have a designated indoor storage location and a person responsible for moving it.
A documentation pass. High-resolution photos and short videos of every room, every exterior elevation, the roof from a drone if available, mechanical equipment, and any high-value contents. Time-stamped pre-season documentation is the single most valuable evidence in a property insurance claim and in any dispute with a platform damage program.
An insurance review. If you are not sure where your policy leaves gaps, start with the insurance gap many short-term rental hosts discover too late. Then confirm specifically: the policy treats the home as a short-term rental, the named storm or hurricane deductible (often a percentage of dwelling value rather than a flat dollar amount, and substantially higher than the standard deductible), the loss-of-income coverage and its waiting period, and any wind or flood exclusions. Flood is almost always a separate policy through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private carrier, and binding new flood coverage typically has a 30-day waiting period — meaning coverage purchased in late August will not respond to a September storm.
A communications playbook. Templated guest messages for each phase: a watch, a warning, a mandatory evacuation, a post-storm status update. Pre-writing these messages when no one is panicking produces clearer, calmer communication than drafting them at 11 p.m. as a system intensifies.
A vendor list. Names and numbers for a roofer, a tarp service, a tree service, a water-mitigation company, an electrician, and a generator technician — ideally ones with prior relationships, because demand for all of them spikes simultaneously in the days after a landfall.
When a Storm Is in the Cone
Once a named system enters a forecast cone that includes the property, the decisions become time-sensitive. The most useful framework is to separate guest-facing decisions from property-facing decisions and run them in parallel.
On the guest side, the question is when to proactively offer cancellations or rebookings rather than waiting for platform policy to do it. Many experienced hosts make the offer earlier than the platform requires, particularly for direct bookings, because the goodwill cost of a forced stay during a tropical storm warning is almost always larger than the revenue at stake. Communicating early — with specific information about what the host is monitoring, what would trigger a cancellation, and how a refund or future credit would work — tends to reduce inbound anxiety messages dramatically.
On the property side, the question is when to send a vendor or cleaner to secure the home. Boarding windows or deploying shutters, moving outdoor items inside, raising contents off the floor in flood-prone properties, photographing the pre-storm state, shutting off water and gas if appropriate, and confirming the generator has fuel are tasks that need to happen 48 to 72 hours before landfall, not 12. Local labor markets tighten quickly once a watch is issued.
For hosts who manage remotely, the pre-season vendor list exists precisely so that "send someone now" is a single phone call rather than a search.
After the Storm
The first 72 hours after a storm passes are the period when accurate documentation is most valuable and most easily lost. Photos and videos of the property in its post-storm state, before any cleanup begins, materially affect insurance outcomes. Receipts for emergency mitigation work — tarping, water extraction, board-ups — are reimbursable under most property policies as part of the duty-to-mitigate, but only if they are documented contemporaneously.
The other recovery decision that surprises hosts is how long to keep the calendar blocked. Restoring a property to a guest-ready state is rarely a matter of cleaning up debris; it can involve roof repair queues, insurance adjusters, supply chain delays on materials, and in flood cases, drying and remediation that runs for weeks. Reopening too early — and then having to cancel a wave of bookings on a damaged property — compounds the original loss. A conservative reopening date, communicated proactively to inbound inquiries, is usually the cheaper choice.
What This Looks Like for Owners on the Margin
The hosts most exposed in any given hurricane season are typically the ones whose underwriting assumes a normal year. A property whose annual cash flow depends on full booking through October cannot absorb a two-month closure in September without other resources. Pre-season is the right moment to look at the math: how many weeks of revenue could the property go without before the loan, the taxes, and the fixed costs become a problem, and does the insurance loss-of-income coverage actually bridge that gap?
The forecasts for 2026 suggest a season that is, on the whole, somewhat less likely than the last two to produce widespread disruption. The forecasts cannot say where the storms that do form will go. Hosts who prepare as if their property is the one in the cone — and who do that work in May — are usually the ones who find the season manageable when it arrives. For year-round operational topics, see more in Operations & Compliance.
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