Monday was June 1.
Happy New Month—and welcome to the start of another Atlantic hurricane season.
Florida, and the entire Atlantic and Gulf coasts, got a much needed reprieve in 2025. While diabolical Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica as a Category 5 monster, only weak Tropical Storm Chantal in the Carolinas made any landfall in the United States.
That came after Florida got storm weary—and drenched—over the prior three years, with Hurricanes Ian and Nicole (2022), Idalia (2023), and Debby, Helene and Milton (2024) impacting Florida with rain, winds and storm surge.
But with tropical weather experts leaning on the expectation of a rather strong El Nino Pacific weather pattern to call for a below average amount of storm activity this year, Osceola County Emergency Management Director Bill Litton is gently reminding residents not to let their guard down, and to be “June ready” for storm season so they are August or September (or in the case of Milton, October) prepared in case a storm does affect our area.
“It only take impact locally to make it a bad storm season,” said Litton, who reminded the Osceola County Commission at Monday’s meeting during his annual storm season briefing— also noting it’s the first time he presented it on June 1.
Litton’s work isn’t just starting this week. The Emergency Management team hosted a Before The Storm event in May to get residents thinking—and acting—about storm season. That event included media meteorology partners to talk about the basics, like having a plan and starting to secure the supplies now to put that plan into action if needed.
“Last year were we very fortunate to have no impacts on the Gulf Coast,” Litton said. “But El Nino isn’t a reason to think it won’t happen. We’ve had strong storms in El Nino years, like 1992 with Andrew, which was the only significant land threat of the year.”
Residents are urged to sign up for Alert Osceola by texting ‘ALERTOSCEOLA’ to 88777 to get updates.
