NOAA hurricane preparedness tour stops in Florida Keys Tuesday

The Air Force Reserve Command’s WC-130J Hurricane Hunter will be on the ramp at Florida Keys Marathon International Airport Tuesday, where NOAA will open public tours from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. EDT as part of its 2026 Caribbean Hurricane Awareness Tour.

The stop in Marathon will launch the four-day tour, which runs April 14 through April 18 and also includes Roatan, Honduras, Belize City, Belize, and Isla Grande, Puerto Rico. NOAA says the effort is meant to help the Florida Keys of Monroe County better prepare for tropical storms and hurricanes and to build a Weather-Ready Nation before the Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1.

Visitors will be able to tour the aircraft and learn how Hurricane Hunters support forecasts by flying into tropical cyclones and sending data in real time to forecasters. NOAA says National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan, warning coordination meteorologist Robbie Berg, meteorologist Jose Alamo, NOAA Aircraft Operations Center flight director Kerri Englert and LCDR David Keith, the aircraft acquisition deputy director for NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations, will visit with local officials and emergency managers.

Monroe County Emergency Management will also take part in the outreach, underscoring the local message that preparedness has to start long before the first warning cone appears on a screen. County resources include Alert!Monroe, an emergency information hotline, visitor emergency information, a special-needs registry and NOAA Weather Radio. Those tools matter in a county where visitors arrive every day, many without a plan for where they would go if a storm threatened the Keys.

NOAA’s Key West weather office says the Florida Keys have already endured some of the region’s most destructive storms, including the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, Hurricane Donna in 1960, Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and Hurricane Irma in 2017. That history is especially stark in Monroe County, where the Overseas Highway is the sole evacuation route connecting Key West to the U.S. mainland. For residents and visitors alike, that makes the marathon stop more than a public event, it is a reminder that preparedness in the Keys has to be practical, immediate and complete.