Wake County urges residents to prepare as hurricane season begins

North Carolina is heading into another hurricane season with a warning that matters far beyond the shoreline. NOAA says the Atlantic season runs from June 1 through November 30, and its 2025 outlook called for a 60 percent chance of an above-normal season. Wake County officials are telling residents not to think of hurricanes as a beach problem, because tropical systems can still bring flooding, tornadoes, high winds and widespread power outages to homes anywhere in the county.

Wake County Emergency Management is leaning on its ReadyWake preparedness program and its Emergency Operations Center to coordinate disaster response across county departments. The county also points residents to targeted alerting and to its emergency plans, including continuity planning and the Emergency Operations Plan. County officials say those tools are meant to help households and businesses get ready before a storm forces last-minute decisions about food, medicine, fuel and transportation.

The urgency grew after Hurricane Helene made landfall in North Carolina as a Category 4 storm in September 2024 and produced what state officials called unprecedented impacts in Western North Carolina. North Carolina Emergency Management commissioned a third-party after-action review of the response, which included 65 interviews and a survey of more than 100 emergency responders. For Wake County, the lesson is clear: a major storm does not have to hit the coast to create damaging effects inland.

Wake County Commissioner Shinica Thomas pressed that point in a May 7 preparedness message, saying, “a little preparation today makes a big difference when a hurricane is on its way,” and urging residents to have supplies and plans ready in advance and to check on neighbors. County Vice Chair Don Mial said emergency preparedness starts at the individual level. Wake County also partnered with the Duke Energy Foundation on emergency kits, another reminder that outages can become a countywide problem even when the worst weather is several counties away.

Officials say residents should use FEMA’s flood hazard information before storms approach, including the Flood Map Service Center and the National Flood Hazard Layer. That guidance is especially important in a county where storms moving inland can still trigger dangerous flooding and leave households dealing with damaged property, insurance claims and disrupted routines long after the rain ends.